


am i now alive again?

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Self-Harm, Suicide, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:47:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: In the year 2038, people can die more than once. Lives are purchased to ensure the security or fulfill the reckless desires of the rich. Gavin has been burning his lives one after the other in an attempt to finally die for good, but his brother, in an effort to keep him alive, ties his soul to a random stranger. If Gavin dies, so do they, and Elijah is banking on Gavin not willing to kill another person. Connor, who is desperate for money to keep his sick mother alive and the antique shop open, agrees to the deal.
Relationships: Connor/Gavin Reed
Comments: 47
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

_[_ **_1_ ** _]_

Gavin was five years old when it happened. He doesn’t remember much of the day. They told him that’s for the best. That’s how it goes. The mind protects itself in traumatic situations. But that’s not true for any of the other memories he has. He remembers those in vivid detail. But when he was five, all he remembers is waking up. He remembers being in the hospital. He remembers the bandages wrapped around his arm where the shattered glass of the windshield had torn through his skin and left him bleeding out, slumped over in the backseat.

Gavin remembers never seeing the car again, except in his dreams, where it filled up to the roof in blood. Him screaming, clawing at the door handles, trying to get out. As if the car had plunged into a river instead of crashing into three others. He remembers taking the bandage off his arm later that day when it was being changed, when the wound was being tended to. Just because they have multiple lives doesn’t mean they’re invincible, the doctor told him. He had listened to her. He had understood her words.

The wound would only heal so much when he was brought back. It wouldn’t completely close without the stitches, and it would hurt without the drugs, and it would grow infected without the antibiotics. He remembers looking at where the triangles printed on his arm were. On his forearm, taking up space, thin black lines outlining each of the five layered upon each other. That was what their parents bought before they were born. Five lives for each son. But now one was filled. Etched in bold black, like the ink existed inside of his body, just waiting to come forth.

  
  


_now_

The only people to call Connor ‘Mr. Stern’ is his best friend when she’s joking and strangers that come into the shop. He doesn’t work in a field that would make it particularly tempting from the people that come into the shop every day, but it does happen. People recognize him from the article he participated in a year ago. It’s strange to think anyone knows his name. It’s even stranger to be quietly prompted _Mr. Stern, do you have…?_

And usually the answer is a _no._

Rainy Day Antiques isn’t exactly a place that has a variety. There are vases and lamps, but little else. People tend to look for the little else. Like dressers and armoires and armchairs. Connor only took over the shop because it was his mother’s pride and joy. He doesn’t have the same fondness for it that he did when he was young. He liked to run along the aisles then, hiding behind clunky bookcases, back when they had something other than teacups to fill them with.

It’s not that the shop isn’t doing well. It’s doing fine. People buy the vases and the lamps (and especially the teacups), but he isn’t good like his mother at picking out pieces at auctions. He hates going to them. He hates having to raise a little paddle or put down a price at an estate sale. He hates buying things, and yet his apartment upstairs is filled with so much clutter he has considered turning this place into a regular thrift-shop. Markus helps with it, though. He’s his best supplier, but he still doesn’t provide enough to keep up with the status the shop once had. It’s deteriorated in the last ten years like his mother’s health has. He is chasing a magic that existed within these walls that were depleted the first time his mother died. It doesn’t matter if she came back. It hurt. The pain cut so deeply he didn’t know how to breathe.

“Mr. Stern?”

He glances up from the counter, standing up a little straighter, “Yes?”

“I’m looking for something, I was hoping you could help?”

Connor puts on his nicest smile, “I’ll try my best.”

  
  


Gavin runs his fingers along the scar on his forearm. It’s never gone away. Scars don’t go away. The body isn’t magical or blessed enough to hide away that kind of pain. The other ones are more faded. Barely there. But this one has always stayed. Sometimes his fingers don’t quite work. As if the tendons and ligaments in his arm and hand didn’t sew back together properly. It’s fine. It’s his left arm. He’s not left-handed—he supposes he could call that a blessing.

The scar runs right through his tattoo. It splinters the triangle markings in half, rippling through like a disease, consuming the ink, leaving the edges behind. Not that it matters. He remembers each life that has come and gone, and he has already heard the speech from the doctor about what to do next.

_If you can get enough money—_

_If you try a little harder—_

_If you live a little more carefully—_

They say this as if he wants to be alive. As if the reason he’s in here isn’t because he put himself here. How many times does he have to put himself here for them to understand? Their parents' money was a waste. Eli should’ve gotten the extras. They should’ve left Gavin to die in that car crash. He would’ve preferred it.

He’s on suicide watch now. Gavin knows his brother has bribed them to keep him here for a while. He doesn’t know how long. They haven’t given him a number. He never cared to learn the rules, he realized. Not in all those nights of thinking about what he would do to end it. He never considered what would happen afterward.

The thing is—

He can only kill himself and pretend it was an accident so many times before they catch on.

_Really, Gavin, you didn’t mean to take all those pills?_

_No, no, no… I just had a headache, that’s all._

And how is his head now that the drugs are exiting his system, that there was a tube pushed down his throat and his stomach pumped of all the remnants?

If only that would’ve fucking killed him, too.

  
  


“What do you mean?” Connor asks. “That you want… _me?”_

The man leans forward, pressing a business card on the table between them, “My name is Elijah. My brother needs help. I know your friend, Markus, he told me you could help?”

“Markus told you I could help?” he asks, taking the card, turning it over in his hands. _CyberLife._ “How do you know Markus?”

“My father helped his father a while back. Look, you’re aware of soul linking, right?”

“Yes, why?”

CyberLife announced their trial three years ago. It has gone under rigorous testing. Linking the souls of people to keep them together. The exact details are under wraps tight. The only reason the public knows is because one of the people involved in it broke his NDA and spilled the trial’s details in a tell-all book marketed under _Anonymous_ in an effort to protect and warn the citizens of the dangers, but even then, they weren’t all listed. It was in the early stages. CyberLife called every last bit of the book false. They tried to sue the author, and then real evidence came to light.

Ever since, there have been protests daily outside of the CyberLife building, trying to urge the government to shut down the experiments with such a high chance of people dying. It hasn’t done anything, though. All of the people are volunteers. They all sign contracts that doesn’t put CyberLife at fault if they don’t make it.

“My brother has… problems. I can’t keep him safe. I’ve tried.”

“Look, I’ve only just met you—”

“And I don’t expect you to answer me today, but Markus told me you’re a good person,” Elijah says. “You’re safe. Compassionate. You care. You never have to see my brother after the surgery—”

“The _surgery?”_

“I need you to link with him to keep him from killing himself. It’s the only way he’ll stop trying to hurt himself. He refuses to get any help, but if there’s—”

“If there’s some stranger on the other side, maybe he’ll rethink it?” Connor scoffs. “I’m not going to give up my life for a stranger.”

“Then meet him first. Well—” Elijah pauses, his face contorting like he’s in pain. “Maybe don’t. I’m not expecting you to do this for free. Markus directed me to you and I researched you last night.”

“You researched me?”

Connor flinches, thinking about how honest he was in that article. People loved Rainy Day Antiques. For the first few months that his mother was too sick to take care of it, an article was written about the support of the customers of her shop trying to fund her medications and her surgeries to keep her alive, but it didn’t last long.

“Yes,” he says with a smirk. “I know your mother is sick. I know you struggle to cover the costs of her medical bills and even then, it’s likely she’ll die even with the best medicine.”

“Are you trying to buy me?”

“No. I’m trying to help you. I can pay you well. I can pay you even more every year he stays unharmed. I can give you a million dollars as a bonus. I can get your mom another five lives.”

“You’re trying to buy me,” he whispers again.

“You’d be doing a good thing. My brother is misguided. He just needs help.”

“And what happens if he refuses it?” Connor asks. “What happens if he kills the both of us? Or the surgery goes wrong? There’s a sixty percent chance that at least one of the patients doesn’t make it out alive.”

“I can assure you that no matter what happens to the two of you, I’ll take care of your mother. And nothing will happen. Those statistics are based on a very old study. The percentage is much lower now. In the teens.”

Connor looks back to the business card. Elijah Kamski printed neatly across it. The phone number, the logo. Connor does recognize him now. He’s one of the few business men at the company that have stepped out into the public eye to answer questions. Not that it’s done much. He has barely scratched the surface of answers the public has been searching for. How things work, why lives have to cost so much, what the point in soul linking even is, other than the romantic inclinations of people deciding it’s worth more than a wedding ring. Which it is.

Connor doesn’t have any lives, and he wasn’t like the kids at school that tested the limits or wanted to see what dying felt like. He was always too afraid. He had seen too many people die to want to experience it for himself.

But—

His mom has a very short timeline. There is very little keeping her alive.

Money could get her better doctors. He could afford the medicine that would help her start to recover instead of slowly staving off an eventual death. If he gets this much money, her life could go from possibly ending by the end of the year to her being awake again.

He hasn’t heard her voice, seen her eyes open, seen her move in almost two years.

“It needs to be put in writing,” Connor says. “I need a contract. I need proof.”

“Of course. Absolutely.”

  
  


The plastic tray hits the wall. No satisfying sound of something breaking like he wants. There’s nothing fucking breakable in this fucking washed-out prison. Eli stands by the door, leaning against the wall, not reacting to the violence. He never does. They got used to it, all those years watching their mother’s lives dwindle down because their father put his hands around her throat or threw her a little too hard. It was a good thing he was rich. It was a good thing her arms were lined with so many triangles that there was no end in sight to her lives.

What did people think when she started to wear sleeves and didn’t display her money and status to the public? What was her excuse?

His was always his scar. He always had that.

“You’re acting like a child, Gavin.”

“You’re acting like a fucking piece of manipulative shit, Eli,” he yells back. “You can’t just force me to go through the surgery. You think they’d let you do that shit? You think they’d operate?”

“I think they’ll do whatever they’re paid to do.”

“Fuck you,” Gavin says. “Fuck you. I wanted to die. Why can’t you just fucking let me die?”

“Because you’re my brother.”

“Half,” he spits the word out, like it’s dirty. Like he hates that part that they have linking them together.

He does. He’s fucking sick of it. The only thing connecting them is a shitty father who couldn’t keep it in his pants and now Gavin has to suffer for the rest of his life because his brother thinks he knows shit? He knows _nothing._

“I promised mom I’d keep you alive, even if it killed me.”

“Then why isn’t it you?” Gavin asks, searching for something else to throw. But it’s all shit that won’t do anything. It’s all things that won’t break and it’s all things that won’t make a noise. He reaches for the cup, water spilling across the floor and splashing across Eli when it hits the wall beside him.

He stands completely still, watching Gavin. Eli knows he isn’t aiming at him. If he wanted to hurt him, he’d hurt him. He knows how to hurt. If he knows anything, he knows how to hurt. But it isn’t as if their relationship is fixable. It has always been like this. It will always be like this. There’s no turning back.

“I’m already linked,” Eli says. “Or I would.”

“You’re linked?”

He nods, “It’s not important, Gavin. You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even have to meet him. It’s not required.”

“You just want me alive.”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you didn’t have to deal with your fucked up little brother all the time? Why can’t you just—”

“Because I do love you, Gavin. Even when you’re like this.”

_Even when he’s like this._

As if he could ever go back to who he was before.

“I won’t do it.”

“Not to burst your bubble, Gavin,” Eli says, stepping away from the wall. “But I didn’t come here for your permission. I came here to tell you what I’m doing. You will be in that operating room whether you consent or not.”

He is out of things to throw, he is out of words to scream. He is just full of this rage that sits inside of him warm and hot and waiting to spill like oil across the sea that he will gladly light a match to. Eli leaves before he can do anything else and Gavin doesn’t follow. He is too angry to follow. He is too angry to do anything but stand here with his teeth clenched so tight he is afraid that they will start to turn to dust.

  
  


Connor does not have money to hire a lawyer. He spends a week reading the fine print of the contract that Elijah drops off for him. In the spare time between when the customers come into the shop, he pulls it out from the drawer, reading it over and over again. He has a near-perfect memory. It’s what got him the grades he did in school and college. It’s just his degree amounted to little more than a certificate on his wall. He didn’t do anything with it. He came here. He took care of his mother. He took care of the antique store.

His phone is always at the ready to google a word or a phrase he doesn’t understand, but nothing seems all that out of place in the contract from what Elijah suggested. Every month, Connor will receive ten grand. His mother’s hospital bills will be covered. She’ll be moved to a better place, closer to his home that he couldn’t afford before. She’ll get the best care. She’ll receive five new lives, and Connor will get five extra, too. And even ten, between him and his brother. Elijah tells him this last part is because he likes round numbers.

Today, Connor is sitting inside of a cafe. The store is closed for this meeting. The meeting after a hundred other meetings. Elijah said he’d reimburse Connor for that, too. All of the customers he might lose in a day would be paid out of Elijah’s pocket. Connor debated rejecting the offer, but he knows the money will help. Put it back into the store. Get something more to put on the shelves. He feels guilty for a moment. Only a moment that it takes for him to remember that Elijah Kamski is rich. He has billions to his name. A couple thousand means nothing to him.

“Hey,” a voice says, rough and deep and annoyed. “You Connor Stern?”

Connor looks up from his hands that have been busying themselves with folding a napkin in on itself as many times as he could manage. He looks up to the man, his back straightening, his eyes taking in the stranger. Short hair, washed out skin like he’s ill, leather jacket pulled tight over his frame, hands thrust into the pockets so harshly Connor can make out the outlines of fists there.

“Gavin Kamski?”

He scoffs. “Reed.”

“What?”

“It’s Gavin Reed. Not Kamski. It sounds like shit. _Gavin Kamski,”_ he huffs out a breath. “He’s a pretentious bitch, you know?”

“Elijah?”

“Yeah. So you’re Connor, right?”

“Right. Do you want to take a seat?”

“No,” he says, but he does anyway. “I don’t know why you agreed to this. It’s a shitty deal. You could get more out of it. A hundred lives, even. My brother’s fucking terrified of me fucking up again.”

“I don’t want more lives,” Connor says quietly. “Why are you so mad at him for caring about you?”

“He doesn’t care about me,” Gavin replies. “He just feels guilty.”

“For?”

Gavin shakes his head. He hasn’t looked at Connor since he sat down. His eyes have been across the room, his leg restless, shaking up and down. His foot is on the leg of the table, making it shake with it. Soft little tremors that radiate up the porcelain of Connor’s mug, making the coffee inside shift just barely.

“Are you nervous?”

“No.”

“You seem it,” Connor says.

Gavin’s leg stops, freezes as he looks back to him, matching Connor’s gaze. He has a scar across his nose. Just barely there. Just as barely there as the little tiny ones around his features. Connor is taking in all this detail without meaning to. Where the spots on his ears used to have piercings, the facial hair that’s been left unattended for at least a week, the choppy ends of his hair that’s likely been cut with his own hand instead of professionally.

“I’m not nervous,” Gavin says finally, his voice even, restrained. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking wimp.”

“It’s a dangerous procedure,” Connor says. “I think you’d be pretty foolish to go into it not expecting some type of complication.”

“I’m hoping for it, not expecting it.”

He’s so free with his disregard for his own life. It’s surprising. Connor thought he would cover it up a little better, but instead he is flaunting it like it’s jewelry.

“I wanted to meet you,” he says instead. “So we could talk.”

“About?”

“About this,” Connor says, his hand coming forward, drawing a line in the air between the two of them. “Us.”

“Listen, fuckwad, there is no _us._ You’re just there to guilt trip me, alright? Don’t act like we mean anything. We don’t. I only agreed to come here because I wanted to talk you out of this.”

“I already signed the contract. And the NDA.”

“You fucking signed an NDA?” Gavin lets out a laugh. “Fucking idiot. You’re really fucking this up, aren’t you?”

“I think of it like charity,” Connor says, his jaw clenched. “When someone can’t take care of themselves, sometimes other people have to step in.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“Then learn to take care of yourself,” Connor says, standing up. “Or at least learn to stop making an ass out of yourself just because someone prefers you alive and loves you. If Elijah didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t be doing this.”

“He cares about his image,” Gavin says, glancing up to meet his gaze. “The problem child that finally offed himself? Do you know what that would do to his reputation? To CyberLife’s? Completely and utterly destroy it. The company built on immortality being slandered—”

“I don’t know you,” Connor says, interrupting him. “I don’t care to know you. I don’t know Elijah and I don’t know your relationship with him, but you’re cruel. You don’t understand how lucky you are.”

“Lucky?” Gavin breathes. “Fuck you.”

“Elijah was right, then,” Connor says, grabbing his jacket, pulling it on as he speaks. “I shouldn’t have met up with you.”

  
  


He watches Connor leave. Peacoat swishing around as he exits the cafe in a hurry, the wind and the snow bearing down on him as he races across the street when the traffic clears. Gavin watches Connor until he makes it further and further away, stopping only when he reaches the bus stop close by. Gavin keeps watching, his hands in fists like they have been since he entered the cafe, until the bus comes by and Connor boards it. Gavin watches as the bus drives, turns, disappears in the middle of the city.

He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Connor doesn’t know shit. He doesn’t understand the weight of the decision he’s made. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth discussing. Elijah will get exactly what he wants out of this deal. Connor will get exactly what he wants. The only one being fucked over is Gavin.

He stands, getting ready to leave the cafe, too furious to even stay and order a cup of coffee even though he desperately needs one to ease the headache rampaging through him right now. But he stops for a second, pauses when he sees the satchel resting on the floor by the chair Connor was in a moment ago. He picks it up, slinging it over his shoulder as he leaves, heading back to his apartment up the street.

  
  


Chloe is like a breath of fresh air when she enters the shop. She’s always allowed in, whether or not they’re open, and there’s no telling when she’ll stop by. Most of the time it’s after seven, when he’s officially closed for the night but still resigns himself to sitting curled up toward the back of the shop, reading a book by light of one of the lamps he becomes increasingly afraid will sell, in the chair that he is scared will one day be bought. They’ve both become such comfort items that he almost rips the price tags off.

“I called you,” Chloe says, sitting on the edge of a desk. “You didn’t pick up.”

“I lost my phone.”

“Oh, did you now?” she asks, tilting her head. “You haven’t talked to me in two weeks. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he replies, his voice quiet. He prefers their conversations when they’re about her. He doesn’t like talking about himself. He doesn’t like making himself a burden. “Just tired lately.”

“Maybe it’s you staying up all night thinking and reading instead of sleeping.”

“Maybe.”

Chloe is quiet before she stands up, grabbing the book from his hands that he wasn’t reading anyway. She sets it down beside her as she crosses her legs. That pose of _this is serious and we are absolutely going to talk._

“Is your mom okay?”

“The same as she’s been for the last month.”

Chloe nods, “So if it’s not your mom, what’s wrong? You have a secret boyfriend you didn’t tell me about?”

“No,” Connor replies, and regrets it. He could’ve lied to her. He could’ve said any number of other things other than the truth. And he’d prefer that. He’d prefer lying to her than admitting what he’s going to do. Markus’ is the one who’s name appears on the contract to help execute Connor’s side of the deal in case he dies in surgery. Not Chloe.

It should’ve been Chloe. It was just easier, not having to explain it all over again. Markus already knows. Markus is the reason he was picked, and that’s also the reason they’re not talking. He’s received a few phone calls and texts apologizing, but Connor can’t respond. He doesn’t know how to. It doesn’t feel right to even be angry with him. He’s getting a good deal out of this. All he wanted was for his mother to be alive and to get better. Elijah is giving him that. There was nothing in the contract about a relationship with Gavin beyond their souls linking together.

It wasn’t that, though. It was how easy it was for Markus to give up the name of a friend to be exploited by someone like Elijah Kamski. Connor didn’t need to be blackmailed into this. The shiny prize of his mother’s life was enough for him to agree in a heartbeat.

_Stupid._

Gavin was right. He’s an idiot.

“Connor?”

“I met this asshole at the coffee shop today,” he says instead. “He just… upset me, that’s all.”

“And the last two weeks—”

“Really, I was just tired.”

“Too tired to go out?” she asks. “Markus and the others—”

“I just want to be alone right now,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

She nods, “Find your phone, okay? You worry me when you don’t text back. What’s my day supposed to be like without stories about customers to make it interesting?”

“I’ll find it.”

“Soon,” she says. “Today sucked without you.”

“Miss me, then?” he asks.

She leans down, pressing a kiss to his forehead, “Always.”

Connor smiles softly, reaching up to hold her hand tightly for a moment. He doesn’t really want her to go. He wants her to stay. He wants to not feel alone for a moment. But he lets go. He makes a promise to find his phone and wishes the best to their friends before she goes. He should’ve agreed to going out with her, he just couldn’t bring himself to muster the energy it takes to mask himself tonight. Not for so many people.

  
  


Gavin Reed is not a fucking thief. He didn’t take the bag with the intention of stealing whatever is inside of it. He has a trust fund, albeit not even a fraction of what Eli had, but it’s enough for him to live comfortably. He was reckless and stupid as a teen, but he isn’t an idiot. He saved the money to easily pay for this shitty apartment of his. He doesn’t use it for anything other than living here without having to work. He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t mind the work he does do, and he does it as little as possible. Not from the virtue of disliking it, just from the virtue of not needing to.

But every Friday and Saturday night he is there, the webcam on, accepting the donations and the gifts from clients. All their names scribbled down in a notebook with what to expect when they ask for the private chats. The one that likes to give him five dollars for every popsicle he’ll eat. The one that coos at him like his scars and tattoos make him a broken poor boy with the tragic life that he can fix. Or the women that like to exploit and fetishize the parts of him that he kept hidden until the day his father died. The easiest people are just the ones that pay him to jerk himself off so they can jerk themselves off in return, their breaths panting and heavy over their microphone and he has to practice his expression to not look so bored and annoyed by the whole exchange as he really is.

He doesn’t mind it. Sex is something he likes. It doesn’t bother him. But he keeps his distance. He keeps a low profile. Low enough that Elijah never has to worry about a camboy little brother marring the reputation of classy businessman Elijah Kamski.

People don’t make the connection, anyway. Not really. Gavin Kamski hasn’t shown his face in the public since he was sixteen and shipped off to an all-boys boarding school where he learned what kissing was. His dad wasn’t very happy about that. But Gavin was. He was safe there. And he’s safe here. It doesn’t always feel like it, but he is. And he’s not a fucking thief.

Connor’s bag doesn’t have anything interesting in it regardless. A novel about sourdough, a wallet, a phone. Fliers with coupons to local grocery stores and thrift shops. Gavin is just trying to find out where the fucker lives so he can return the bag, but all he finds in the wallet is a driver’s license and his brother’s business card (new, Gavin realizes, it’s a slightly different shade of white, the lettering is black instead of dark blue, the CyberLife logo is updated now, since the company’s facelift two years ago, when Gavin last had Eli’s business card left behind for him).

Gavin scribbles the address on the license down, looking up the way there on his phone as he turns in for the night. Connor can deal without his bag for one night. He’s tired. Tomorrow is Friday. Tomorrow he has to go shopping for all the things that people have requested he have for his live show. There aren’t many people that show up. A few strangers, but mostly regulars. People that call him _Redd_ instead of Gavin or Reed, because he thought it would be funny to tease so close to his real name without ever letting them in on the joke.

Sometimes he wonders what they would think if they knew how close he was to death. And he could end it now, Gavin realizes.

He could just do it now. They let him out of the hospital a few days before the surgery. He could just fucking end it now and Connor wouldn’t have to suffer with always having Gavin on the other side of his life. The deal would be broken. It wouldn’t matter. Gavin would get everything he wanted.

But then, Connor probably wouldn’t get anything.

And Gavin Reed is not a fucking thief.

  
  


The bell rings over the doorway. Connor’s eyes move away from the computer screen to the door, ripping them away from his research into what phone he can buy to replace the one he’s lost. He looked through his apartment last night and the store this morning. He must’ve left it on the bus or at the cafe. There’s no getting it back if he did.

Or so he thought, because Gavin is stepping into the antique shop, glancing around with Connor’s bag on his shoulder.

“Wh—”

“You left this,” Gavin says, not letting him ask the question. He just sets it on the counter without looking. “You should be more careful of your shit.”

“Thanks,” Connor says, without an ounce of sincerity. He closes out of the tab on the website in front of him, like it’s porn instead of comparing and contrasting the new smart phone models. “You didn’t have to come here.”

“No?” he asks, looking back to him. “How else would you get your bag back?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Look,” Gavin says. “I know you said you didn’t want to get to know me. I don’t want to get to know you either. I don’t care. We don’t have to ever see each other again. I’d be glad for that, but I’m not going to send over some messenger to deliver your shit to you.”

“Thanks,” Connor repeats again. “You can go now.”

Gavin rolls his eyes, stepping away, “Yeah. Guess I can. You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” he echoes a third time, each one somehow lacking more authenticity than the last.

Gavin hesitates by the counter, his mouth moving like he wants to say something, but he gives up eventually, turning away and exiting the shop just as quickly as he entered. The little bell ringing to announce his departure. Connor takes his bag, sifting inside of it for his phone— _dead—_ and his wallet—still containing the three dollars—and the driver’s license—now facing backwards in it’s plastic slot.

Connor doesn’t owe Gavin anything. Not after the way Gavin treated him. But he is itching with the guilt and the regret that he didn’t ask for Gavin’s number—just in case. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but surely if they’re sharing lives, Connor should have some way to contact him, shouldn’t he?

_Another time,_ a voice whispers quietly. They’ll see each other again just before they head into surgery. _It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine._

  
  


Connor sits on the chair in the room, looking at his mom laying on the bed. All those tubes and machines, keeping her heart beating, her lungs breathing. Doing their absolute best to pump medicine into her body to fight the sickness inside of her. She won’t be transferred until after the surgery—Connor doesn’t think that Elijah would want to risk him bailing in that case. This will be his last visit before going to CyberLife tomorrow. Another person to participate in their experimental procedures. There’s a reason they’re only down at CyberLife HQ. It’s easier to fake the reporting if something goes wrong. It’s easier for them to cover their tracks.

But his mom is going to die soon if he doesn’t do anything to help her. He doesn’t want that to happen. The only thing that matters to him is his mom staying alive. Chloe is his best friend, but it’s not the same. He never felt like he was involved in her friend group because she wanted him there. It always felt like an invitation born from pity.

“Mom?” he says quietly, his voice hoarse. “I’m going to make sure you get better.”

She doesn’t move. She never does. She hasn’t been awake for ten years.

But he stays. He stays because he can cry here without worrying about someone walking in on him, and he doesn’t trust that he can leave the room with the tears still built up inside of him.

So he cries until he can contain himself and he gathers his things, saying a goodbye to her as he departs.

  
  


“Still going through with this?”

Connor looks up to Gavin as he steps into the room they assigned him to when he arrived last night. He’d seen Gavin wander around the halls a few times late in the night, but he didn’t say anything. And he didn’t think he’d be here for so long. He thought this would all be quicker. He should’ve asked more questions. But instead he has been awake all night, doctors coming and going to do various check ups on him. He wasn’t allowed to eat last night, and he barely got an ounce of rest before they sent him down the hallway to sign the last few documents.

“So are you,” Connor replies. “You couldn’t have run away?”

“Eli would’ve tracked me down.”

“And you think he doesn’t care.”

“I _know_ he doesn’t,” Gavin says quietly. “You shouldn’t lecture me about carring. You’re only in this for the money, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Connor says with a sarcastic laugh. “That’s the only reason.”

“What, are you Eli’s new boytoy? Doing this as a favor so he’ll drop everything and marry you or something?”

Connor closes the book on his lap, setting it down on the table next to a half-empty glass of water, “I have my reasons. They don’t have anything to do with you or Elijah Kamski.”

“So you’re single then?”

Connor laughs, “Are you asking for any particular reason?”

“I just think it’d be stupid to risk this if you were dating someone other than him. You signed an NDA. How would you explain that to a future lover?”

“You should mind your own business.”

“You’re practically going to be my soulmate, don’t I get to know anything about you?”

Connor stands up, gathering his things, ready to retreat to the other side of the room, though he thinks it will do little good, “I thought I made it pretty clear I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, except talking isn’t really necessary—”

“I don’t like men, so you can stop,” Connor says. “Who even are you? You changed your tune from last time we met.”

“I thought about it. I decided you’re cute enough.”

“Are you _trying_ to make me hate you?”

Gavin shrugs, crossing his arms, leaning against the wall, “Maybe. Is it working?”

“Yes. Congratulations.”

The doors open, a doctor steps in and his heart starts to beat a little faster again. Anxiety courses through him until there’s nothing left but panic. _Can he get out of this still?_ No. He signed the papers. The documents are legally binding. The surgery isn’t outlawed. He agreed to it. There’s no turning back now, even if there was a loophole. He has to think about his mom.

“Go back to your room, Mr. Reed,” the doctor says, looking over to Connor. “Are you ready?”

_No. No. No._

“Yeah.”

  
  


They run through all the information again while he’s waiting there, the mask slipping over his face as he counts backwards. Yes, his name is Connor Stern. Yes, his birthday is August 15th. Yes, his blood type is AB negative. He falls asleep to the sound of them asking the same questions to Gavin. _Name, Gavin Reed. Birthday, October 7th._ That’s all he really catches as his eyes slip closed.

It’s a blessing to sleep through it. It’s a lot different to last time, when he could feel the hands inside of his body taking whatever they wanted.

  
  
  


He doesn’t feel different.

Gavin thought he would feel different.

He wakes up groggy and tired and with a pain in his chest that lingers like a healing bruise, but when he checks the skin there, there’s nothing. Not even stitches to cover up the incision. He pauses, holding his arm out to his side. More tattoos on his skin now, underneath the scar. Ten all together. Only five left. Five lives he’s going to have to suffer through. Five lives he won’t be able to do anything about keeping or getting rid of, because he wouldn’t hurt Connor. He’s just a stranger, but he doesn’t deserve to die because Gavin wants to.

Elijah got his wish, and he didn’t do anything to stop it.

  
  


Gavin’s apartment feels empty. A surreal thing suddenly. He stares around at all the things lining the walls and the shelves. All of the furniture that he bought simply to fill the space. All of the clothes in his closet that he hates but never got rid of because there didn’t seem to be a point.

Something inside of Gavin feels angry and annoyed. All this stupid shit that he’s filled his place with. All this useless junk that he’s accumulated because he tried to buy his own happiness. He is moving before he is even thinking about it. Taking trash bags and boxes and throwing things inside of them, hauling them down to his car that sits waiting on the side of the road, begging him every time he’s in it to just crash into a building.

Gavin wants to get rid of it all. He wants to get rid of the shirts that Eli passed down to him because he might need some nice clothes, or the shelves his father built and he was guilt-tripped into keeping. He throws out the picture frames and the photo albums. He wants to get rid of it all. He wants to get rid of every last trace of his family. The precious china his mother bought, the wine glasses, the silverware. He just wants it all gone. If he can’t get rid of himself because of Connor, then he can at least get rid of the traces of his past and his history.

He’s standing by the edge of the counter when the plate with it’s blue and green rose details along the sides slips from his hand, crashing against the floor in little glass shards.

  
  


“Where were you?” Chloe asks, sitting on the barstool in his kitchen, swiveling around to follow him as he sets up dishes on the table. “You weren’t at the store the last few days. Did something happen?”

“I needed to take some time off,” he says. “That’s all.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he says. “I want to have a nice dinner with my friends. That’s all. Can you help me with that?”

“I think so. They should be here,” she says, picking up her phone as it buzzes, as if all-knowing. “I’ll go help them bring food up. Do you need me here?”

“No, I got it.”

Chloe disappears from the apartment, her steps down the stairs quiet before the door opens and voices erupt from downstairs. Pleasantries passed back and forth. The first dinner they’ll all have together in a while, and the first that they’ll have since Connor and Markus argued without really ever arguing. He is better at the cold shoulder than talking when it comes to Markus. Markus has a face that is easily forgiven. That part of the two of them never went away, and it has remained something hard to ignore.

Gavin isn’t like that. Connor doesn’t know where the thought has come from. He’s tried not to think about Gavin since the surgery yesterday morning, but it’s hard not to. The few interactions he’s had with Gavin have left him annoyed and bitter. And, unfortunately, all topics seem to have some way of looping back to Gavin Reed, even Markus, apparently. Markus with his easily forgiven face, and that voice that makes Connor smile. Little things that make him wish he wasn’t such a coward ten years ago and that his mother didn’t get so sick that he couldn’t even risk a relationship that he knew would be as fragile as her clinging onto life.

Gavin is different. Gavin is easy to hate. Gavin is easy to be angry with, to fight and scream and sit annoyed in his bed late at night when his thoughts are tormenting him, unable to shut off.

Connor turns from the cupboard, the glasses in his hands. He bumps into someone, feels the body against his and he stumbles forward, one cup falling from his hand and against the floor and the other held safely against his chest. He doesn’t look at the glass on the floor, he is looking for the person, looking for whoever it was, Chloe’s name escaping his lips in a soft surprised gasp before they’re choked out of him.

Not Chloe.

Gavin.

  
  


_He’s in his kitchen._

**_Connor_ **is in his kitchen.

He is staring at him with wide eyes, all the anger in him disappearing and replaced with confusion and shock.

“Connor?”

“G-Gavin?”

His gaze turns back to the glass shards on the ground, knowing that something is wrong. Something strange is happening. Connor bumped into him. Gavin _felt_ him bump into him. Connor can’t be here, but he is, and when Gavin looks back up to question Connor, he’s gone.

He steps over the shards of glass, glancing around his apartment, looking in every room and closet for him.

But he isn’t here.

And there was something strange, too. This weird feeling inside of him when he saw Connor, when he felt him. He doesn’t know how to explain it. He can’t place the name. But it’s like when he was a kid, racing through the streets on a summer day, when the wind would pick up and everything would shift around him. When the grass would move and the sky would darken and there would be an eventual storm, so fast, like the snap of fingers. No warning. But that one moment before the storm, that feeling of electricity—

That’s what Connor felt like.

The calm before a storm. The potential danger lurking around the corner.

  
  


“Connor? What happened?”

He’s on the floor, picking up the shards carefully, setting them inside of a wash rag to protect them. One second Gavin was here, the next he was gone. It happened in the blink of an eye. He heard Chloe calling his name, asking if he was alright, and when he turned back, Gavin was gone but the glass was on the floor. Just not what he dropped. Not the remnants of a broken cup, but a plate, with delicate roses on it. Not even close to what he was holding. This is thick porcelain, hand crafted. His glass cup was thin and small and he always hated using them because of this fear that it would break in his hand.

“I dropped something,” Connor says, because he doesn’t know how to explain to Chloe that this is a plate he doesn’t own. “It’s alright. Don’t worry. I can take care of it.”

“Well, be careful,” Chloe says. “Don’t cut yourself.”

He lets out a small laugh, hoping that their combined efforts to play this off for humor will cut the tension. It’s just that the tension Chloe is feeling is the remnants of a bitter war between him and Markus, and not the fact there was a stranger in his apartment a second ago.

Like a ghost.

When he finishes picking up the pieces, when he knows the others are busy talking, he brings up the sleeve on his arm, looking at the long line of triangles that fill up the space. He knows five are already missing, and he counts them again, trying to figure out if Gavin being here was some sign that he already was dying again, but there’s nothing. There are five filled and five empty.

Nothing.

_Then what happened?_

Connor stares down at the pile of broken pieces, reaching for one of the large shards, the one that shows a pair of roses, almost perfectly broken to be by themselves. Red, like the ones his mother used to tend to when she wasn’t sick. Red, like the ones that he used to prick his fingers on when he tried to steal them for the classmates he had crushes on. Red, like the one that’s inked onto Gavin’s skin, climbing up his neck like it’s going to choke him.

_What happened?_

He doesn’t know. He wishes he did.


	2. Chapter 2

_ [  _ **_2_ ** _ ] _

He was fifteen when he took his own life. Still scared of pain. Still scared of everything. That’s why he wanted to end it. He was terrified of having to continue to live like this. So fucking terrified of absolutely everything. He stole his brother’s sleeping pills, one at a time, hiding them in a baggie in the floorboards. It took a year to get a decent amount. He promised himself a year, regardless of how many it would actually take to kill him. The year was supposed to be spent considering this, really considering it, every time he dropped a pill into the bag and hid it once more.

Gavin was fifteen years old waiting for the opportunity to come by. His birthday was a good option, and his first choice: his brother would only have one real sad day about him. There would be no reason for Eli to be sad on his birthday, and again at some other point in the year, on the day marking his death. Lining the two up was like killing two birds with one bout of grief ten years from now.

It seemed like a good idea, but he couldn’t wait that long. He had to wait for another day. Not Valentine’s Day—he wouldn’t ruin Elijah’s potential future spouse’s special day like that. Mother’s Day? Maybe. But what if Elijah married a woman, what if they had kids? What if every time he was supposed to be with his wife, he would think of Gavin’s death? He only chose the day because he knew it would remind the two of them of their own mother, but suddenly it was impossible.

And then he considered his mother’s birthday: the first week of September. Closer than October. Still. Too. Far. Away.

But their mother died at the end of February, on the 29th. This year was a leap year, too. This year, they would be expected to go to her grave. They would be expected to have a lot of grief in them. It would give Gavin an excuse to write something in the suicide note that detailed his reasons as  _ being overcome with the loss of my own mother  _ instead of  _ I am terrified that one day my father will kill me just like he killed her. Over and over again, while I had to sit in the next room and listen to her screams and I couldn’t do anything to stop it, because I was too young to know what was happening, and she never stayed dead. She always came back. She was always there until one time, she wasn’t. _

He knew the pills were enough to take out one of his lives. He knew that by the process of the reviving, they couldn’t cure him entirely. They would do the best they could, bringing him back from the brink, but if he took enough, he would die once more. He has enough, he thinks, for all the deaths still outlined on his arm.

So he tries.

He sets up his room the way he wants it. He picks out the clothes from the closet. He dresses in his favorite things. Funeral clothes, he thinks. Black from head to toe. He takes the pills one by one, the letter tucked in the pocket of his jacket, and he closes his eyes, drifting off. Further and further away.

He wakes to screams.

  
  


_ now _

It’s almost five in the morning and his apartment has been nearly completely cleared out. There are boxes and bags sitting in the trunk of his car, waiting to be donated. It’s filled so full he was surprised by the fact so much fit into it. There are still a few things waiting for him at the doorstop, but he has to wait until the shops start to open to take things away. He only took one trip so far, dropping off three bags of clothes and blankets at GoodWill before coming back and thinking that he could sell the books, which led him to thinking he could sell the remainder of the plates in his cabinet to an antique store, which led him to thinking about Connor.

It’s an excuse for Gavin to go see him. To talk to him. It’s the only place Gavin knows where to find Connor. He doesn’t have his number. He doesn’t know where he lives. But he knows where he works.

But it won’t open until eight in the morning, at the earliest, so he sits by his window, watching a few strangers stop by on the side of the street, taking a piece of furniture he’s left out by the side of the road. He has nothing now. Not even a television, which was taken before he even got back down with the shelf it used to sit on.

There’s some furniture that’s too big for him to do it by himself. He doesn’t know how to get rid of it. If he’s polite enough, the neighbors might take it away. If he’s not too cheap, he might hire some movers to just take it down the steps and leave it there. It would be gone quick, too. People don’t always save money for furniture now. They want another life. They save for that instead.

Gavin runs his fingers over the scar on his arm absentmindedly. One more stranger, one less shelf. Gone before the sun can come up.

It’s a relief. It means he has no choice but to move on.

  
  


Connor is barely awake, nursing a cup of coffee as he curls up in the armchair that he’s moved behind the counter to rest in during the lulls in the shop hours. Most of the time he stays here, with a book in his lap, with his eyes half closed, jolting awake at the rare moments that a customer actually comes in before he can fully wake up.

He could just change the hours. But the people that come in at eight in the morning are usually the kind of people that will actually buy quite a bit and become regulars.

However, today, he hopes that the person walking into the shop isn’t going to be a regular.

“Gavin,” he says, getting up, setting his mug aside. “You’re back.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“About last night?”

“Yeah,” he says. “And no. Do you buy stuff?”

“What?”

“My mom collected a lot of antiques. My brother took most of them when our parents died and we got to fight over the stupid shit, and I just want to get rid of the stupid shit that I actually won. Sorry. If that’s mean. It’s just a bunch of dusty old glass. Sorry. Still mean.”

His apology is somehow the most sincere and least believable thing Connor has ever heard.

“You’re trying to sell me antiques?”

“Yeah.”

“I already have someone I buy from.”

“Look,” Gavin says. “It’s a one time thing. I want the shit out of my apartment. Will you buy it or not? I don’t really care what you pay me. I just want it gone.”

“Then I guess I’ll pay you nothing. I’ll take it off your hands as a favor.”

“How kind,” Gavin sighs. “And about last night—”

“I don’t know what that was,” Connor says. “I thought I could call Elijah, see if he knows?”

“Elijah? You’re on a first name basis with him now?”

“Sorry. _ Mr. Kamski _ is the one of the lead scientists on the experimental procedure we both participated in, so I thought  _ Mr. Kamski  _ might know a thing or two about  _ Mr. Reed  _ popping up in my place last night.”

“ _ You _ popped up in  _ my  _ place.”

“Is this really worth arguing over?” Connor asks. “Because I don’t think it is, and you already exhaust me.”

Gavin smirks, but the smile falls fairly fast, like he doesn’t even have the effort to make a joke like  _ I could exhaust you in other ways, too. _

He doesn’t make any sense.

Like he has to choose between being a cruel jerk and being a perverted one.

“I don’t want to tell him,” Gavin says quietly. “I know you don’t owe me any favors or anything, but… him knowing my business isn’t exactly something I’m fond of. We aren’t really subjects in his little trial, you know. You’re just here to keep me from killing myself.”

Connor looks up to him, and it feels a little surprising with how easily he says it, like suicide is nothing. Like death is nothing.

“Then what do we do if it happens again?”

“Try not to throw plates on the floor.”

Connor tries for a smile, “It was a cup. I had a cup.”

“Then we won’t throw cups,” Gavin says. “I don’t think it’s a matter of what we’ll do anyway. It’s just how it happens.”

“Well, our souls are technically connected now. Maybe you wanted to see me.”

“Maybe  _ you  _ wanted to see  _ me.” _

“Maybe you should go get your antiques and bring them in here so I can price them before I kick you out and call Mr. Kamski.”

Gavin laughs, on short laugh, “Okay. Fine.”

  
  


Connor does pay him. Not a lot. But Gavin doesn’t mind. Money has never really been an issue. He’s good at budgeting, and he’s good at investing. His father divided his wealth into two when he died, leaving eighty-percent of it Eli, and twenty to him. Not a single cent of it went into charity until it touched Elijah’s bank account, and Gavin plans on doing the same. He doesn’t invest his money because he wants to be rich or because he plans on living for a long time. He invests his money so there will be a bigger sum to donate when his life inevitably ends.

And, he supposes, never having to really work a day in his life is nice, too. He can live off of the bare minimum, and he prefers that over having to suffer at a job every day of his life. Going live on Saturdays has been enough to sustain him for the last five years. His client list is small, but loyal to a fault.

The money isn’t a problem, but he does spend it quickly. Buying a stool for the internet router to sit on when he gets back to his apartment, hammering it together before laying on the floor beside it, letting the music float from his phone to him, filling the empty space and echoing around. There’s a can of paint waiting by his feet. A bright splash of orange that he plans to paint over the light gray with.

He is operating off of a new technique now:

If he has to live, he’ll need a job. If he has to live, he wants to make the right decisions. Think things out clearly, but follow his gut. Right now, he is trying to think things out clearly of whether or not his paint color will actually look good on the walls.

Gavin gets up to his feet, cards a hand through his hair, sets to work.

Paint won’t change anything. It won’t last forever. It won’t fix him. But it’ll cover up the underneath for just a little while. It will buy him a few days. His apartment will give him a project to focus on. Something to live for.

All he needs is something that will take his thoughts from him and force his hands to work.

This is better than nothing.

And if it doesn’t last—

He was always fond of green, too, and he can paint over and over again until the layers on his walls suffocate him in the small space.

  
  


He doesn’t want to sell the plates. He looks at them, sitting neatly in a row on the counter in his apartment, spread out so he could look at all five of the ones left. Connor had retrieved the broken remains of the one from the night before, arranging them as closely in the shape of the plate it used to be as he could.

All of six of them are relatively identical: white porcelain, red roses, green leaves behind them, branching out. But all of them were made by hand, each having their own little changes to them. One of them has three roses, one large in front of two smaller ones, curling around the side of it. Another only has two roses, with more leaves taking up more space. Each rose holds a different amount of petals. Connor counted. He wanted to see the differences in each one.

They’re unique. They’re special. They would sell for quite a bit, regardless of it missing one from the set. But he doesn’t want to sell them for the same reason he wants to fix the broken plate. There is something stopping him. Something telling him that he should keep them. 

So he does.

Connor carefully stacks the fixed plates together, hiding them in the cupboard above the stove. He takes the broken pieces, putting them in a small box, leaving a message on Markus’ voicemail asking if he can fix it for him. Markus has always been pretty good at fixing things. He has the same attention to detail that Connor does, just framed in an artistic manner rather than a need to keep things orderly.

He slumps against the counter, eying the places where the paint in the kitchen is a bit sloppier than he would like it to be, but he hasn’t touched it. He wants to. He has this need to fix it. But the walls of his place are painted this soft golden yellow that his mother chose, and he hasn’t been able to bring himself to change it. It’s the only thing of hers left in the place. She had cleared it out for him to live here just before she finally admitted she couldn’t keep the shop running by herself.

And he likes it.

He’s always been fond of yellow.

“Connor?”

He turns, quickly, to the sound of the voice. His first thought is  _ someone is in my house  _ and the second thought  _ they know my name. _

But it’s Gavin, standing by the wall where his couch is pushed up against. There’s a paint brush in his hand, held at his side.

“You’re here,” Connor says quietly.

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.”

Connor steps away from the kitchen, not letting his eyes leave Gavin’s face. One careful step after the other toward him. His hand reaches out gently, tentatively, terrified that it’s going to swipe through him and leave nothing behind. But his hand rests against Gavin’s shoulder, trails along his sleeve, feeling the textured fabric of his shirt.

“You’re  _ here.” _

“You keep saying that.”

Connor bites his lip, “It doesn’t make sense.”

“No. It doesn’t,” Gavin says. “Can you see my surroundings? I can’t see yours. Just you.”

His hand pulls away from Gavin fast. He doesn’t know what it is. Maybe the change in Gavin, who seems to keep changing, keep being someone new every time they interact, and he isn’t prepared for the way he says it. The  _ just you  _ soft and quiet and suddenly Connor’s hands are on his stomach, like he can protect himself from the blow, like the words can hurt him.

They can’t.

But he wants Gavin gone regardless.

He doesn’t want him here.

  
  


Connor vanishes. It’s strange. Not like he’s blinking out, but like he’s been smudged out of existence. He turns his head, his face disappearing into a blur of colors, his body contorting in a strange state, like static on an old television is running through him. He doesn’t disappear fast, but he doesn’t disappear slowly, either. Just long enough for Gavin to see him leave. One moment he’s here, and the next he’s gone. Erased from his empty apartment, leaving nothing behind.

He doesn’t know what it means.

He doesn’t know what to say.

He turns back to his wall, half painted, the edges carefully left bare so he can paint them with his brush, the bright blue tape left covering the trim bright white, waiting for the eventual perfect reveal of the clean line behind, which is never as clean as he’d like. It’s never the perfect crisp lines that they promise. He doesn’t really care. It doesn’t really bother him.

But he’ll waste a few hours of his life taking a tiny paint brush to patch it all up, and all of this is just an excuse to waste a few hours, isn’t it?

Gavin is still thinking of Connor as he kneels down by the wall, dragging the paint brush along the divide. He’s thinking of him as the last strip of pale gray turns deep sunset orange. He’s thinking about how similar the color is to the shirt that Connor was wearing a moment ago.

And he feels something—

A wall. Something against his thoughts, pushing him back. It feels like something physical, like it’s making his movements a little more constricted, his breathing a little tighter. There is something stopping him from reaching out, and he didn’t even place the feeling of  _ reaching  _ until he felt something closing his hand into a fist, pushing it back against him.

**_No._ **

A harsh, strong word, not thought in his own voice, but thought in Connor’s. Echoing around his head.

**_Stay away._ **

  
  


There are paint drips on his floor. Connor doesn’t notice until the next morning, which he usually spends trying to get his eyes to stay open, while the water in the coffee pot heats up. He sees the dark splotches against the floorboards, so perfectly uniform in color he knows they don’t belong to the wood around it. He’s had this same flooring his entire time here, the entire time his mother lived here. Ten years he looked at the wood pattern in the floorboards, memorized the shapes of them, where the knots and scratches are.

But the light catches these, turns them a bright warm tone that doesn’t match, and he walks over to them, leaning down, pressing his fingers against the splotches. Dried paint, unmistakably the same orange on the tips of the brush Gavin was holding last night.

Gavin.

Of course it was Gavin.

  
  


“You’re back.”

He doesn’t even sound surprised. Not an ounce of shock registers on his face. He’s just accepted this, like the two of them have known each other longer than this, that Gavin’s appearance in the little antiques shop is normal.

“I’m back,” Gavin says, setting a box down. “With vases. And questions.”

Connor shakes his head, looking away, “What do you want?”

“You shut me out last night.”

“I—What?”

“You pushed me away. You wanted me gone. Yes or no?”

“Y-Yes, I suppose. It’s not like we’re friends, Gavin, I don’t exactly like having a stranger lurking around my apartment. Especially when he paints my floor.”

“I painted your floor?”

Connor nods, “And I can’t get rid of it. I looked up a hundred different things online and not a single method worked. So thank you. I’ll always have a reminder of you now.”

He tries not to smile and he only half succeeds, “Okay. So… you shut me out. It worked.”

“It worked?”

He doesn’t know what to say. To admit that he was reaching out for him. He didn’t know he was. He doesn’t know how to explain that despite the fact they’re strangers, Connor is really the only person besides a therapist or his brother that he’s exchanged more than one conversation with.

“I could feel you pushing me away. That’s all.”

“Did it hurt your feelings?”

“No,” Gavin says with a small smile. “No. I would’ve thought you were stupid if you didn’t. But we want to figure this out, right?”

“No,  _ I  _ wanted to stop it from happening. And now I know how to.  _ You  _ wanted to figure it out.”

“Jesus, Connor, was I that much of a dick to you that you can’t even talk to me about this?”

Connor seems to consider this before nodding, “Yes. You were. Did you forget? You yelled at me. You said I was stupid. You practically called me Elijah’s whore or a gold digger. You want me to like you? It’s not going to happen. I don’t want to figure this out. I want my money. I want my shop to stay open. I want my mom to not die for a third time going through the same excruciating death. I don’t want you in my life. I didn’t agree to that. Your brother never said I had to be friends with you. I never wanted to figure out the rules behind whatever this is, I just… want you to stop coming here. I want you to leave me alone.”

The words sting. They hurt because they’re true. They hurt because they’re the same things he’s heard a hundred times before.

“You never even apologized, Gavin,” Connor says quietly. “You just pretend it didn’t happen. You were cruel to me, and now you want me to forget it, and for what? So you can have a mystery to solve? So you can fuck me and then forget about me? It’s not going to happen.”

They’re both quiet. The antique shop is almost silent, except for the ticking of the different clocks hanging on the wall behind Connor. Each set perfectly in time with each other. All the second hands making the same exact journey at the same exact moment.

Connor almost looks like he feels guilty for saying the words, but he isn’t taking them back. He shouldn’t.

He’s right.

“I’ll go, then.”

“Gavin—” Connor says, the wheels of his chair moving against the floor, the bell above the door jangling as Gavin is half in, half out of the store. “You forgot your vases.”

“Take them. I don’t have any use for them anymore.”

He leaves, the door closing behind him, the cold air brushing against his face as he walks quickly to his car parked down the street. He doesn’t know why he’s hurt so badly. He doesn’t know why there are tears springing to his eyes or why he’s this upset about something when Connor was right. He never apologized. He was a jerk. But he was never taught to apologize to people. His family was full of violence or pretending that something didn’t happen.

Him and his brother argue constantly, and they have never properly apologized when the arguments cut a little too deeply, which was always more often than not.

Pretending something didn’t happen was how he was taught. He knew it wasn’t right, but the thought of apologizing for anything other than the small things, like bumping into a stranger, always felt too difficult.

Connor was right. Gavin is an asshole. He doesn’t try hard enough. He doesn’t do enough.

  
  


The door to the diner opens and closes. His brother scans the place before finding him and taking the seat opposite of him. He looks nice, all dressed up in his suit. Probably cost a thousand dollars. Probably headed off to work after this. He looks strange, though, too. Gavin remembers how he used to dress before he got all this money. Graphic tees and jeans with holes in the knees. He remembers the glasses that used to sit on the bridge of his nose, the tattoo of a bird on his shoulder.

“You’re here,” Elijah says, almost like he’s surprised. “What do I owe the pleasure of your company to?”

“Nothing. I can’t just spend time with my brother?”

“Not when you’ve refused to talk to me for twenty years.”

“Who’s fault is that?” Gavin asks, turning his attention toward the menu. “I was thinking pasta. Alfredo fettucini, like mom used to make.”

“Gavin. I’m serious. Why am I here? Just to eat? Do you need money?”

“No.”

“Then what? Are you suffering from side effects, Gavin?”

_ Side effects. _

He clears his throat, “How would I know if I was?”

“They aren’t the type of side effects that go unnoticed, Gavin.”

He wishes Elijah would stop saying his name. Over and over again like he’s trying to prove that Gavin is here. That he isn’t someone pretending to be the lost Kamski brother.

“I have a question,” he says, turning the menu over, pushing it away from him. He doesn’t really want to be here. He just didn’t know how to talk to Elijah without it being a public place like this. The buffer of other people, the promise of food to distract themselves if they got quiet. But he isn’t hungry anymore. He just wants to leave. “You said you’ve tied your soul to someone. Who?”

“It’s not important.”

“Not important?” he leans forward. “You’re my brother.”

“Half.”

“You’re my brother and you’ve tied your soul to some fucking random that I never got to meet.”

“And who’s fault is that?” Elijah says pointedly, returning his words back to Gavin like a slap in the face. “You think it’s only my fault we haven’t talked in twenty years? I have tried to talk to you, Gavin. You run. It’s what you do. It’s the only thing you have. Even if I bothered to get you to meet him, it would’ve been useless.”

“So it’s a him?”

Elijah sighs, leaning back against the booth, his hands coming up to his neck, pulling at something hidden behind the collar of his shirt. He lets the chain rest against the fabric of it, a shiny silver band hanging on the end.

Not just a him.

A husband.

Elijah’s married.

Gavin feels stupid for wanting to cry. He doesn’t even understand it, but it’s the first thing that hits him. That they’ve really lost each other so much Elijah didn’t even invite him to a wedding, which was probably small and tasteful considering the public doesn’t know and the ring is hidden.

“Have you been suffering from any side effects, Gavin?” Elijah asks instead. “Seeing things that aren’t there? Hearing voices?”

“I’m not going crazy.”

“I didn’t say that,” he says. “It’s still a question. Are you suffering from side effects?”

He considers lying. Shutting out Elijah in return for being shut out from a wedding, a fiance, a boyfriend. An entire life. Maybe Eli even has little kids running around his place. How the fuck would Gavin know? And if he doesn’t, why the fuck does Elijah deserve to know shit about his side effects? He’s already tainted every possibility of Connor being someone more to him by doing this. Not that Connor wants him anyway.

But it’s the familiarity of the anger that forces the truth out of his mouth instead, the need to try and stray from the path he so comfortably wandered.

He is  _ trying. _

“Yes.”

“How badly?”

“It’s only been a few days, Elijah. How the fuck am I supposed to know how bad it is?”

“Because if you’re already seeing him, it could get much worse. It’s important. I need you to be honest with me about this.”

“I’ve only seen him once,” he says, scared back into lying with the way Elijah is looking at him. He’s never seen Elijah look so worried before.

“Did you talk to him?”

“N-No.”

“Okay. Did you try?”

“No. He disappeared. Why?”

Elijah shakes his head, “Just call me if it gets worse, okay?”

“What happens if it gets worse?”

He goes silent, watching Gavin with a careful gaze, a small smile, “Just call me if it happens, okay? There’s no reason to worry about it if it’s not happening. But talking to him will just exacerbate the problem, so please… leave him alone, Gavin.”

Gavin lets it go. He doesn’t question any further. He doesn’t know how to. When Elijah finalizes conversations, they are done for. The only thing that would get anything else from him is following him and yelling at him. Being the angry person he is trying his hardest to let go of. He can’t do that in public, and some small part of him appreciated this moment of neither of them screaming at each other, even if it wasn’t  _ happy. _

  
  


He sits on a rooftop, cigarette between his fingertips, the ashes floating in the wind away from him when he taps the end softly. The coat he has isn’t warm enough, but he doesn’t have another one, and he’s only wearing one glove, his hand still closed around his lighter. He can feel the engraving through the knit of it, though he can’t make it out as easily as he can with his bare fingertips.

It’s fine. He knows it by heart anyway.

_ The bridges you burn will light the way. _

His father’s lighter. The only thing he’s kept. Once out of a reminder that he would never be as cruel as his father was and now just an excuse to be a piece of shit himself. He doesn’t know how he ended up like this—becoming his father in the small things. The resemblance to them isn’t something he likes. The same nose, the same eyes. The same stupid fucking lighter.

Once upon a time, he tried to pledge himself to kindness. To show people the generosity he never got. And it didn’t last. He was too consumed with his own grief. It kept coming back, like waves in the ocean, knocking him down even though all he wanted to do was swim away from shore. He could never make it. He could never make it to those little buoys floating out past the edge of Lake Michigan.

Maybe if he tried a little harder, he could be a different man than he is now. Maybe the person literally tied to his soul wouldn’t be pushing him away.

He feels something give inside of him. At first he thinks he’s breaking. Another part of his body falling apart to tears and anguish but instead he feels something instead. Something warm against his cheek.

“Gavin… are you crying?”

He raises his hand, cigarette between his fingertips, using the heel of his palm to brush away any stray tears that got through before turning to look over his shoulder, Connor standing a few feet away on the rooftop.

“The fuck are you doing here?” he asks quietly. “Thought you pushed me away.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I felt… something.”

“What?”

“You. I don’t know. I couldn’t… breathe properly. It’s better now.”

“Good for you.”

“Gavin,” Connor says again, like his name is always on the tip of his tongue. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“What, can you feel that, too?” he asks it sarcastically, angrily, but the way Connor’s face moves, the concern there, he realizes the question could be real.

“I do,” he says, taking a step closer.

“Well, sorry to bother you with my shitty emotions.”

He looks away, back to the city. All of it’s cold streets and rainy weather. The kind of biting cold that doesn’t seem like it’s as cold as it should be. There’s no snow. Just the wet remains of a storm from an hour ago. The chill in the air stays, but it doesn’t hit him as much as it had a moment ago. Ever since Connor said his name, he felt some part of it drift away. A warmness like a heater beside him.

The two are quiet for a long time. Gavin thought Connor left until he hears his feet against the pavement behind him, until he feels him sit down next to him. He doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, for a long moment. And he won’t go. He won’t disappear. Gavin doesn’t want him to, but it’s strange, seeing him for so long.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says finally, quiet.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, louder, but the volume doesn’t change the sincerity of his tone. “I shouldn’t have been so rude to you. You didn’t—You didn’t deserve that. I was angry at my brother and I took it out on you.”

“You were angry at your life and you took it out on your brother, first,” Connor replies.

“You don’t know me.”

“And you don’t know me,” Connor returns. “You didn’t know me then and you didn’t know me now. You can’t make excuses for being cruel.”

“I know.”

“Then just apologize. Without a  _ but  _ or  _ because.” _

“Okay,” Gavin says. “I’m sorry.”

“Was that so hard?”

Yes. But he won’t tell Connor that.

“You know I came back because I like you, right?” Gavin says instead. “Not because of the… link, or whatever we have.”

“You like me?” Connor asks, a small laugh. “Because I’m cute, right?”

“You are. But no. I mean… Plenty of people have challenged me, right? Called me out for being a dick? You aren’t special because of that, no offense, but, I don’t know. I like you. I don’t know why. Just not solely because you’re cute.”

“I don’t mean to be rude to you, Gavin, but I don’t particularly like you. So the feeling isn’t mutual.”

He laughs, taking another drag of his cigarette, “I figured as much.”

“I wouldn’t mind, though, trying to get to know you,” Connor says. “I’d be okay with that. If you aren’t rude, and if you stop flirting.”

“Okay. I can do that,” he says. “And I talked to my brother today. He said we shouldn’t do this. Seeing each other, talking to each other, through this connection. He wouldn’t tell me why. But we can be friends or something in real life, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Connor smiles, putting his hand up to his face like he’s trying not to. 

“You never answered my question, though,” Gavin says.

“What question is that?”

“Can you see my surroundings?”

“No,” Connor says. “Just you.”

“So where am I?”

“My bedroom. You’re sitting on my bed. Looking at my wall. There’s a poster there.”

“What does the poster look like?”

“Mountains. From a trip when I went with my mom when we were kids. She had it printed out because she thought it looked really professional.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. It’s morning, so it’s all foggy and gray. But I like it. I like mornings.”

“Yeah? What are you doing up so late, then?”

“I kept thinking about you,” Connor says quietly. “I felt bad, for what I said.”

“No, it’s fine. You were right.”

“Yes, I was, but I could’ve been more tactful,” he replies. “Where are you? It’s freezing. You must be cold.”

“No,” Gavin replies. “It’s warmer with you here.”

“Yeah?” he shakes his head. “I thought I said no flirting.”

“I’m not flirting. You’d know if I was,” he says. “I’m on the rooftop of my building. We’re on the edge. Just don’t move too far forward. You might fall into the street. I heard that hurts.”

“Duly noted,” he says, with a short nod.

Gavin watches him, the way the night lights his face. The soft glow of the moon, the orange glow of street lamps. The way he keeps himself curled up, like he’s shivering.

They should leave. Elijah said not to exploit the connection. But Gavin likes this moment, and he thinks maybe he can steal it for a little bit longer. Just him and Connor on the rooftop, or in his bedroom, just together.

And Connor was right.

It is a little bit easier to breathe when he’s around.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! uh
> 
> extreme CW for self-harm in this chapter. it's described in-depth as it happens (about 1.5k words worth) and talked about after. it's the first few scenes of the "now" section.

_ [  _ **_3_ ** _ ] _

It was like this:

The anniversary of their mother’s death came and went, but the words didn’t stop. Gavin got out of the hospital. A week passed by slowly, the pills out of his system, Eli’s bottles locked in a cabinet now, with the key hanging around their father’s neck. Gavin’s stash was gone, though the hiding spot remained unfound. He thought he would get further than just one life. He didn’t expect how he’d be brought back, just barely to the surface, with his brother screaming for help.

A week came and went.

His death was not forgotten.

His father made sure of that.

Twisting his arm, screaming at him, telling him that he ought to cut through the scar once more. Splay out all those gory tendons and bones and muscle once more.  _ How would that make you feel? _

He screamed the words in his face. The time for the quiet, controlled anger was gone. There was nothing to try and keep hidden anymore. The anger was out there, laid in front of them, just like it was before his mother died. When the screaming never stopped. When any little thing she did would spark resentment.

The quiet is worse, he thinks. It’s always worse. It could be nothing, his actions might not have caused a single thing. But sometimes it means he’s planning something out carefully. Making sure Gavin hurts as much as possible. But he isn’t planning. He’s just acting.

It usually stops at the hitting. At the being pushed against the wall, at the face slammed against the floorboards. It usually stops. But it doesn’t, and by the time Gavin realizes it’s not going to stop, he’s too weak to do anything but whimper and cry and hold back a scream because screaming always makes it worse. The hand closes around his throat, pushing him down, pressing over his neck, cutting off his oxygen. He is gasping for air, trying to claw the hand away, but he can’t. He is trying so hard to fight and he’s losing.

_ Now you want to live? Now you think your life is worth the fucking money I paid for it? _

No.

He just doesn’t want to die like this.

But he does. His hands fall. His vision goes black. He wakes the next morning with bruises around his throat, with his breath coming out in rasping and painful gasps. Alive, but just barely. He can’t even speak. Elijah sits in his room with him, crying and apologizing, saying that he wished he was here. That he would’ve stopped it. They were too young to do much of anything before when it was their mother. They couldn’t break down the door of the room their father threw them into, if he even had time to do it. It was their mother that usually hid them, knowing how bad it was going to be.

_ Go to the attic. Cover your ears. Close your eyes. Don’t come back until I get you. _

But Elijah wasn’t here to stop it. And Gavin doesn’t know if he actually would’ve. He might’ve just hid. He might’ve just cried. He might’ve died, too. It was better that he was somewhere safe, somewhere on the other side of the city with his friends.

Is that how their mother felt, like everytime she died, somehow she was still protecting her boys?

  
  


_ now _

It’s been a while. Well over a year. Well over two or three. But he remembers how to do it. It’s impossible to forget.

He remembers as a kid, the mothers of the other children were always terrified and frightened that their kids would get ideas from movies or shows that they shouldn’t be watching. That they’d play with the guns their husbands kept locked in safes or they’d try to parachute off rooftops. He remembers thinking how stupid they were, how much they overreacted. He remembers his father and his friend’s fathers telling them to calm down. And he has to wonder what they would think if they knew the only reason he knows how to do this was because of a show he watched when he was ten years old. Eyes glued to the drama playing out on screen, the curiosity that came from seeing characters harm themselves.

He never liked blood, but when he was fourteen years old and needed a release, he tried it. He broke a figurine he made in art class two years earlier, used the broken pieces to try and dig into his flesh, but he was too scared. He only scratched the surface. Less damage than a cat would do, less damage than a cat had done. He went through phases of turning his aggression on himself instead—purposefully falling from the top of jungle gyms, fists against his knees or his stomach, starting fights with the bullies. He could press down on those bruises and have some form of pain to distract himself, but it was never quite enough either. Sometimes, when it got bad, he would bite down on the side of his hand, teeth digging into the fleshy part of his palm. He remembers staring at his skin until it would turn back to normal, like nothing ever happened.

It wasn’t until he saw a boy on a show with a lighter and a hair clip that he replicated it as best as he could.

He could do that—

He could burn himself. It seemed easy. Hold the object over the fire, press it against his skin. If he had the urge to pull away, he could do the opposite. Push harder. Make it worse.

So he did.

He stole a nail file from his mother’s bathroom when she wasn’t home. A metal thing with a black plastic handle,  _ REVLON  _ carefully embedded in the handle. Four little red diamonds all clustered together. The color scheme matched the lighter he stole from the gas station a week earlier.

He’d gotten used to the way fire looked. He watched candles flicker in their glass, wax dripping away, honey and lavender left in the air. He tested out a few different things before he found the nail file, but none of them quite did the job. A hairclip burned his fingertips. Bobby pins were too small. Anything fully made out of metal either took too long to heat up or he’d drop when the heat became too much to hold in his hand. But the nail file was perfect. The metal slowly blackened, the heat rising off of it. Eventually he was able to get past the initial point of pain, when the file wasn’t quite hot enough to do anything but was more than just the warmness that almost reminded him of the feeling of sitting by a fire, wrapped up in a blanket, waiting on hot chocolate or s’mores.

It was something else he had to learn after the fact. How much it actually took to scar the skin, how much pressure, how much time, how much heat. The pain needed to linger. If there wasn’t an excruciating pain that followed for hours after, there likely wasn’t anything other than red skin that would fade away after a few days. It’s hard to burn oneself to that point, though. He’s often gone too extreme. Burned away nerves just to get the scars, which was the only point, it seemed. He wanted the scars. He wanted a mark that would stay forever. He needed something to remind him of the pain. He needed something that wouldn’t go away. He needed something to tell him that when he felt this way, it wasn’t such a tiny reaction to do this. If he had a scar, he could validate how upset he was. If he didn’t, it was easy to trick himself into thinking he was overreacting. The scars help. The scars always help. He isn’t ashamed of them. He never has been. When he hid them from the other kids, it was because he didn’t want someone to take this away. His safety-net. It wasn’t something he did every day, or even once a week. It was rarely even a monthly endeavor.

He’s gone years without it multiple times. It was never an addiction, and it was always something easy he could replace. Nobody thinks twice about a guy buying a lighter, especially when they come along with a pack of cigarettes. It’s not even all that suspicious to buy a nail file. He’s thrown both of the things away multiple times. He’s been shopping and unknowingly replaced them. He’s never sought it out. It just sort of happens. He’ll be in an aisle buying a new toothbrush, and he’ll think about how close a new nail file is, how cheap, how easy it would be to have one  _ just in case. _

He’s gone years without using them, and every few months they both end up in the trash, always a thought of  _ so that’s done with, yeah?  _ before they’re back again, sitting in a drawer on his nightstand, pushed to the back with all the broken phone chargers he keeps forgetting to get rid of. And sometimes his hands will brush across a hot pan or the water from the dishes will scald his fingertips and he’ll think  _ how nice would that be right now? _

It’s been three years since he’s done it. He’s thrown the items away five times since then and bought them all over again.

It’s not hard to give in to the need to kill oneself when they can come back. But Gavin can’t come back. He can’t knock a life away that Connor might need or want. But he can do this instead. He can have this tiny respite.

And he wishes it happened in better numbers—

It always takes more than one try to be satisfied with it, even if the first one seems to have pain linger strong enough and long enough that it promises the scar he wants. One isn’t enough. But he wishes it was a better number. A three or a five. They sound rounder. But four is off. He hates it, but if he doesn’t stop at four, he’ll go onto five/six/seven/eight until his entire arm is red and aching. One isn’t enough. Two catches onto the need for more. Three tempts him to go on. Four is the cut off. It always has been.

And there’s only a scar maybe once every ten. By the looks of his forearm, he doesn’t seem like he’s harmed himself as much as he has. It looks bare. The scars there are pale, blending in with the lightness of his skin, constantly shielded from the sun by long sleeves. But mostly those sleeves aren’t to cover these scars. They’re there to cover the one on his other arm, the scar that cuts through his tattoos, the one that reminds him of the first time he died. Him burning himself amounts to so little. Often it makes him feel like he hasn’t done quite enough. He hasn’t hurt enough to qualify for this kind of feeling.

Gavin doesn’t do anything to take care of the wounds when he’s done. He doesn’t bandage up his arm. He doesn’t clean them. He doesn’t find the burn cream that he keeps in the bathroom for times when he doesn’t purposefully do this kind of thing. He just pulls his sleeve down, sets the nail file and the lighter back where they belong, and continues as if nothing happened. If it’s late enough, he’ll go to sleep. Curl up in his bed with his numb feelings and his soft blankets and hope that this emotional exhaustion will be enough to give him enough sleep that he’ll be okay in the morning, when he’ll look over at the damage he’s caused and judge himself for not heating the metal up hot enough, pressing down hard enough, leaving it there long enough, even though he always leaves it against his skin until the metal cools.

He’s fine.

Everything is fine.

  
  


Connor is making dinner when it happens. His hands gripped around the handles of the pot, turning it over into the sink where the strainer rests, penne and hot water spilling into it. He jolts, one hand letting go of the pot and it clatters against the side, a swear leaving his mouth as he tries to shake off the pain that doesn’t go away. Tears spring to his eyes as he rights the pot, resting it on the side of the counter still half-full of water, half the pasta spilled into the basin of the sink as he whispers  _ fuck  _ ten times over before he pulls the edge of his sleeve back, staring down at the pale skin of his forearm at the red mark. Strangely rectangular, long but not wide.

The pot caused that?

He could’ve accidentally pressed his arm against it—

And then he winces again, the pain igniting once more and he watches his skin turn red. Another addition just below the first.

Not him.

It’s not him.

He crumples in front of the fridge, digging out whatever he can get his hands on to relieve the pain. A bag of frozen veggies resting against his skin, dinner left forgotten as he tries to breathe past the pain.

He doesn’t have a way of contacting Gavin. Not without using their link. But that’s what it has to be, right? It can’t be anything else. That doesn’t just happen. Gavin’s his only explanation. But when he tries to reach across the distance, he feels nothing but a solid wall. Blankness on the other side. He should’ve got his address or his number. He should’ve found a way to contact him. He’s so stupid. He’s such an idiot.

  
  


“I brought you teacups,” Gavin says, setting a small box on the counter. “I thought maybe—”

“Can I see your arm?” Connor asks.

“W-What?”

“Can I see your arm?” he repeats.

Gavin glances down at his hands, one going toward the edge of his sleeve when Connor reaches out and stops him.

“Left arm.”

“Why?” he asks hesitantly, but he can see in Connor’s gaze he’s not here to make jokes. He holds out his arm, doesn’t pull the sleeve back like he knows Connor wants him to. He’s not going to do that. He’s not going to reveal it himself. He can’t.

He’s gone his entire life without people knowing unless he was in hospitals and it was pried out of him or seen in operation rooms. He’s not going to tell anyone shit.

Connor’s hands are soft and tentative when they pull the fabric of his shirt back. They rest lightly on the scars, so soft and small and light. So barely-there, but still there. And then they pass over the tender skin of the marks from the night before. None of them quite what Gavin wanted. In the moment they hurt, some of them even seemed promising, but not now. Not when the redness finally faded and his skin which seems hellbent on staying smooth and unbroken only shows red edges where the file had pressed in the hardest, rested over the flame the longest.

“Connor—”

He shakes his head, this moment of annoyance slipping away into concern as he lets go of Gavin’s arm, pulls his own sleeve back, turns his arm over. Four red marks, resting in neat rows. Not the faded nothingness of his own. But angry and vicious, with blisters forming. The kind of wounds that Gavin was looking for.

It takes him a second too long to catch on, and he can’t breathe suddenly. He can’t force air in or out of his lungs. He’s just stuck staring at the marks on Connor’s arms, at the tears in his eyes.

He did that.

_ Gavin  _ did that.

“Connor, I’m sorry—”

“You were trying to hurt yourself,” Connor says quietly, pulling his sleeve back down again. “You didn’t know.”

“Connor, I wasn’t—”

“If it wasn’t you, then who did this?” he asks. “Because I doubt it was an accident. So if you weren’t hurting yourself, then someone else was doing it to you. And if you don’t tell me who that someone else is, then I’m not… I don’t know what to do, Gavin.”

“I didn’t know,” Gavin whispers. “If I had known you would feel it, I wouldn’t have done it. I was trying to…”

“To what?”

“I was trying not to hurt you,” he says.

“How so?” Connor asks.

He chews on his lip, looks away from Connor. The words are there, boiling under the surface, too impossible to say. He doesn’t like to say them like this. It’s easier to say them when he’s angry and pissed off. It’s easy to say them when it’s already happened. It’s not easy to say them when it hasn’t, when it’s the day after he’s survived those thoughts.

“I’m not mad at you, Gavin, I’m just worried,” he says. “Please talk to me.”

He looks back to him, looks at the expression on his face so filled with worry. Of course he’s worried. But he should be mad. Gavin should’ve known something like this could happen. He should’ve guessed. He should’ve been smarter. He’s so fucking stupid, he’s always so fucking stupid—

“Gavin?”

“I wanted to kill myself last night,” Gavin says, letting the words come out in a rush, detached and far, far from his own mouth. “I didn’t know how to do it without hurting you. I didn’t think you’d—Did you feel it? When it was happening?”

“Yes.”

_ Oh, fuck, oh god— _

“I’m sorry, Connor. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right. It won’t,” Connor says, reaching for a notepad behind the counter, passing it across the counter toward him. “Give me your phone number, your address. You’re not going to be alone, Gavin.”

“I don’t need you to babysit me.”

“I don’t care,” he says quietly. “I’m not going to let you hurt yourself again, in any capacity.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No?” Connor says, like he’s contemplating guilt-tripping Gavin. He probably is. He could pull up his sleeve again, show the marks, and Gavin would be helpless to tell him to leave him alone. “Maybe I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Because we’re soulmates now?”

“Because  _ I care about you _ , Gavin.”

He doesn’t believe that. Just like he never believed Eli could ever give a shit about him, just like he knew his father didn’t. But he writes down his address anyway, he prints the numbers of his phone number as neatly as he can manage. He considers giving a fake number, a fake place. He should’ve given Connor his number before, when Elijah told them to stop exploiting their connection, but he couldn’t, because he was having the same thought then as he is now.

That it isn’t a good idea to be in Connor’s life at all, and how easy it would be to run away from Connor. He has a fair amount of money. He could go somewhere else entirely. He could leave the country, and Connor couldn’t do anything to stop him.

But he won’t.

Because like before, he is aware that he likes Connor, that he is connected to him. It’s likely this artificial joint between them, but—

But he is drawn to him, and the thought of leaving him and never seeing him again is…  _ painful. _

  
  


Connor comes by his place with a lot of food and without much notice. Just a text late in the evening that reads  _ have you eaten yet?  _ And when he says  _ no,  _ there’s a knock on his door ten minutes later, a plastic container pressed into his hands. His place is mostly empty, and he watches Connor look around it with curiosity while Gavin eats. Hands trailing across freshly painted walls, resting on boxes of furniture he has to assemble. All he has are three mismatched metal stools in various degrees of the masculine industrial aesthetic he can’t decide if he likes or not.

He nods, turning back to look at Gavin, “Are you in the middle of moving?”

“Just resetting.”

“Is that helping?”

Gavin shrugs, “Does your arm still hurt?”

“No.”

“Do you need help taking care of it, or—?”

“I’m fine, Gavin.”

“You sure?”

He nods again, coming over to Gavin’s side, “Are you?”

“Am I sure?”

“Are you  _ fine?” _

“Nobody’s kicked me out of bed for being ugly yet.”

“Gavin, you know what I meant.”

“Right. You have eyes. You probably already know I’m fine.”

Connor lets out a sigh, more than a little perturbed, “Has anyone ever kicked you out of bed for being annoying?”

“You could be the first.”

Connor rolls his eyes, but Gavin thinks he sees a trace of a smile on his lips when he turns away, “You have to stop that.”

“Flirting with you?”

“No. I mean—yes, but I meant the joking part. I’m trying to ask you a serious question.”

“I’m feeling better now than I did last night. Does that answer your serious question?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

  
  


Connor doesn’t stay much longer. Their conversation is stilted and awkward, ending with Connor asking for the things that Gavin used, and when they’re pressed into his palms, they seem strange and small, like they could never do the damage that they’ve done. It’s like staring at a bullet. So tiny, so destructive.

“Promise you won’t replace them?”

“Promise. And you would know anyway, if I did.”

Connor nods, but it means nothing. This is the only time he’s felt Gavin’s pain. He wonders to what extent the physical nature of their bodies affects the other. He wonders what all Gavin could do to himself that Connor might never know about. There are ways of making someone hurt without leaving something behind.

Would Connor feel a bruise? Would he feel stiff and sore muscles?

Sometimes he gets this inkling, like someone hovering over his shoulder. This emotional thing pouring out beside him. But it’s like a shadow. If he focuses too much, it snaps out of existence.

Connor takes a step forward, wrapping his arms around Gavin, holding onto him for a moment. A quiet  _ take care of yourself  _ passed between them that he’s too scared to voice. He knows his voice will shake. He knows Gavin will just nod and stay silent. But the hug is something that neither of them can ignore, even though Gavin’s shoulder presses into the tender skin of his forearm and it hurts.

It hurts, but he holds on anyway. Willing away this pain and this worry and hoping that it conveys how much he was wrong before, when he told Gavin he didn’t like him. He does. There is something attractive about Gavin’s charm when he allows himself to be a person beyond the sadness and loneliness.

“Don’t you have a life to get back to, Connor?” he asks quietly.

He does.

Chloe is going to take him to the movies tomorrow. Markus is coming in early with new finds for the antique shop. He’s going to visit his mother in an hour. But he wants to lie. He wants to stay. He wants Gavin to not feel alone.

He pulls away slowly, resting a hand against the side of Gavin’s face, “Call me.”

“When?”

“Whenever. If you need me. Or want me. If you just want to talk or if you need to talk.”

“Just leaving it open, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What if I want you in a way you won’t let me have you?”

“Are you asking me if you can use my number for a booty call?”

Gavin shrugs, “Maybe.”

Connor passes his thumb over Gavin’s bottom lip, leans in a little closer, his voice quiet and soft when he says, “Absolutely not.”

“Worth a try?”

Connor shakes his head, smiles and says his final goodbye, though he wishes he didn’t have to. But he needs to leave. He has to meet up with Chloe. He has to get rid of the lighter and the nail file that feel like evidence to a murder. He has to leave before Gavin’s words become more and more tempting than they already are.

  
  


He watches the steady rise and fall of her chest as he stands at the edge of the hospital room. She’s doing better, or so the doctor’s have told him. But they don’t know if she’ll wake up any time soon. Connor’s mother is a fighter, always has been, but the disease is a fighter, too, in its own way. A destructive thing that destroys the body over and over again.

He takes a step forward, opening his mouth to speak as he lets the words fall from his lips, taking a place in the chair beside her bed. Everything that has happened in the last month spilling out of him. So much of his words tainted by Gavin.

_ Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. _

He is pained by the thought that he would like her to meet him, and he doesn’t know why.

Maybe because they both seem so fragile, so half-dead already.

But he knows there is a possibility they can both get better, too.

  
  


If he tried to pretend he didn’t know how his thoughts lead to this, he would be lying. There are plenty of times when he lies down to sleep that his thoughts wander, jumping around a hundred different subjects, staying up far too late but never getting tired enough to actually sleep. His thoughts have to run their course. They have to exhaust him to the point where he can’t manage to keep his eyes open any longer.

But sometimes he needs to expedite the process, and that’s usually the reason behind things like this happening, where he ends up feeling wrong and broken in some way. Sleeping pills don’t help—he’s not allowed to have them after his suicide attempt involving them and herbs like valerian root don’t always help.

Sex does. Usually. Nine times out of ten. The last remaining bit is usually him staying up longer, squeezing his eyes shut, forcing back tears for feeling like this is all he’s worth. He could pretend he isn’t, but it’s useless to pretend. No amount of someone reassuring him he’s worth the space he takes up on earth or the time they spend with him is going to sink in. Not the way he wants it to.

And nine times out of ten, sex leaves him quiet and tired enough that he can sleep, that he doesn’t dwell on the things after. He can cling onto the feeling of at least being good enough to get someone else to climax. 

It’s more dangerous on the nights when he doesn’t have the energy to go out and find someone, when his thoughts lurk on the edge of sex long enough that he doesn’t have the patience either. In those times, it’s more risky. Especially when his thoughts jump around subjects he doesn’t know how to avoid.

He puts off touching himself for a long time. He always does. He settles in the comforting space of the fantasy. Someone touching his scars like they care about what caused them. Someone kissing him like they care about the words that might come out of his mouth. In his fantasies, people always treat him tenderly. In his fantasies, people want  _ him _ , and not the sex.

When he does get up to touch himself, Gavin promises himself it’s just for work. Someone’s paid a fair amount of money for a video that they can have saved to their phone and watch over and over again. But that doesn’t mean his thoughts aren’t going to settle on a fantasy he’ll enjoy, when the request is left so blank. What he doesn’t mean to happen, though, is for Connor to get in the mix. He doesn’t know how it happens. It’s usually a faceless person. It’s usually just the idea of someone. He tries not to form a fully fledged picture, tries to focus on the fleeting feelings and emotions and not the face. But it’s Connor’s face in his fantasy, pressing a kiss against his neck, drawing fingers down the line of his chest, settling against his thighs.

It feels wrong in a way he can’t stop. He shouldn’t be using someone he knows for a fantasy like this, but he pictures Connor’s head between his legs, mouth pressed against him, tongue moving against his skin. He pictures Connor’s hand carefully wrapped around him, stroking slowly, the same kind of slow pace that Gavin uses on himself.

He knows his skin is rougher, more calloused than Connor’s is. He could feel how soft Connor’s hand was when it touched him. He could feel the way his body was made to hug, when Gavin’s was only ever made to hurt. He thinks about Connor’s legs, wrapped around, holding him close, begging to be closer. He thinks about how tight Connor would be, how often he’d have to stop and kiss Connor just so he didn’t cum too quickly.

He thinks about how Connor has blushed at something that Gavin’s said before, and he pictures that blush across his cheeks. Soft red, biting his lip, looking up at Gavin like this is all he could ever want.

_ Fuck— _

_ Connor, Connor, Connor— _

He sits upright, his heart racing, his hand coming up to his chest, trying to ease it away. There’s something pulling at him. Tugging around his middle. It feels like it’s going to yank him out of the bed, and he reaches toward it, following it through.

It takes him a second to notice where Gavin is, and he only does when he feels the blanket pull away from him, the surprised gasp as Gavin sits up.

“What the fuck are you doing—?”

“You were calling for me,” Connor says. “Y—You woke me up.”

“I  _ what?” _

He can feel it now. Something connecting between the anxiety and pressing need for Connor clashing into the way Gavin’s face looks, the pleasure curled up inside of him, the embarrassment spilling out over all of it.

_ Oh. _

Oh.

Oh no.

“Get out, Connor.”

He nods, and he feels both of them slam up the walls at the same time, the room empty again, the blanket beside him tugged to the side, falling back into place.

Connor presses his hands against his face, feeling how warm his skin is. The embarrassment isn’t just Gavin’s, it’s his, too. They’re so intertwined that even the wall between them can’t stop it from leaking through. The pleasure isn’t his, though. He can feel how separate it is, how quickly it’s fading, how quickly it’s being replaced by guilt.

It’s not funny, but part of him wants to laugh, and he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because Connor sees his face every day in the mirror, sees his body naked in the mirror when he gets out of the shower, knows how little of it is really all that attractive. But it’s not really that Gavin would get off to the thought of him that’s funny. He just thinks if he doesn’t laugh, the tension inside of him isn’t going to break, and he won’t be able to fall back asleep again.

So he laughs instead. It comes out a little broken, a little hysterical, until there are tears in his eyes from it, until his stomach hurts and the embarrassment has been swept away until he can pretend that this is funny, until he can convince himself that it is.

  
  


Markus comes in early, a folder set on the countertop between them. Various vases, couches, wardrobes that he’s found that Connor can buy off of him. Markus would be his best supplier, if Connor had more than one. He has good taste. Though, he supposes, Gavin has become a bit of a supplier for him, as well. The teacups he brought in the day before have already sold.

“Can I ask you something?” Connor says carefully. “Something a little—Um… sexual?”

Markus looks around the shop, finds it empty as it always is this early, “I suppose.”

Connor’s face burns, knowing how often he thought about posing this question before, when it was the type of question that he asked pretending something wasn’t about the two of them, but always was. He used to think that him and Markus could be together, and if he said something like this, Markus would see through him and admit he felt the same.

It’s strange seeing him and knowing that it’s not true anymore. Connor doesn’t want him that way anymore. He can admit that Markus is attractive, but—

It’s not something he wants. Just something he appreciates.

“If you found out that you were the subject of someone’s… late night fantasies, how would you… what would you do?”

“Depends on who it is.”

“Does it make a difference?”

“Well, Simon’s my boyfriend. I hope I’m the subject of his.”

“I’m sure you are. But if it was a friend, someone you’re getting close with?”

“Like you?”

Connor’s face flushes, “Not  _ me.” _

“Can you stop posing this as a hypothetical and just tell me what happened?” Markus asks, leaning across the counter. “Unless you’re hitting on me.”

“I’m not hitting on you.”

“Simon might be up for a threesome.”

“Well I’m not,” Connor says. “I—I heard a friend. We aren’t—I don’t know, super close. We didn’t meet that long ago. I heard him saying my name. So I went to him and…”

“Caught him jerking off?”

“Nevermind,” Connor says quietly, turning away. “It’s not important.”

“Connor?” Markus asks. “Are you okay?”

“It’s just embarrassing.”

“Yeah. It is. But is it a bad kind of embarrassing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it make you uncomfortable, him thinking about you like that?”

Connor shrugs, “I don’t know.”

It was mostly that he could feel it. The way their emotions could tangle together. Gavin’s pleasure didn’t affect him, but he still felt it, it still felt like it could’ve done something. Like there was a possibility it could’ve manipulated him, that it could’ve changed how he felt. There was this moment when his consent came into question, and he didn’t know how to answer it. It’s on the same level as the pain of the burn wounds. That it happened to him and he couldn’t stop it. The pleasure was brief, but it was still there. But there was this invisible wall between him and it. Something that stopped Gavin’s pleasure from ever forcing something out of him. Connor knows that the reason he felt something inside of himself was the thought of Gavin like that, especially thinking about  _ him. _

“Maybe you should talk to him. Set it straight. Do you want to be with him or not?”

It’s too complicated of a question. It pretends that he has a choice of whether or not they could be together. They are tied to each other for forever now, until they both die. 

“I want him to be my friend,” Connor says quietly. “I don’t know if I can have a boyfriend.”

“Forget about what you can or can’t have. Do you  _ want  _ him?”

Yes.

The same way he wanted Markus, all those years ago. And it would be hypocritical of Connor to pretend he never thought about someone else when he needed to get off. It’s just—

Different.

Feeling it. Knowing it happened.

  
  


He’s walking through his bedroom door, tugging the hem of his shirt down over still-wet skin from the shower, when he spots Connor on his bed. The walls between them have slowly pulled away over the course of today. It’s exhausting keeping them up. Like working a muscle he didn’t know he had. But he should’ve kept it there. Eli told him not to talk to Connor through it for a reason.

But when he sees Connor, all of the reasons to push him away seem to vanish.

“Hi.”

Connor looks up to meet his gaze, “Hi.”

“Are you planning on staying there?”

“I was planning on talking to you.”

“About?”

“I think you know what about, Gavin.”

“Spell it out for me.”

Connor shakes his head, looks annoyed like he always does, “I thought you flirting with me was a joke.”

“I thought so, too.”

“But you were—”

“Yeah. I was. I didn’t mean for it to be you, Connor,” he says, and that’s true.

But the previous bit—

That was a lie. Gavin has known he’s liked him since they started talking. It hasn’t gone away. He just knows now he likes Connor for more than his appearances.

“I could feel it,” Connor says quietly. “I just… I don’t know how to say it.”

“Try. I’ll wait.”

Connor nods, letting out a quiet breath, “I know you didn’t do it on purpose, but don’t call to me.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

They sit in silence for a moment. Gavin waits for Connor to disappear. That’s all he must’ve needed to say. That’s all he could’ve said. He should go, but Gavin doesn’t want him to go.

“Gavin?” Connor says. “I’m not blaming you. I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t… entirely not want it, either.”

“What are you saying, Connor?”

“I’m saying… if you want me, I’m here.”

He blinks, trying to reconcile this picture he had of Connor when he first came into the room, sitting on the bed, scared and uncomfortable, with the way Connor is looking at him now. Like an offer.

Is it even possible? Across their connection? Connor’s touched him before, but not like  _ that.  _ But the broken cup in his kitchen, the paint on Connor’s floorboards—

Who’s to say it can’t?

“Are you sure?”

Connor nods, Gavin steps closer.

“And you want me  _ now?” _

“Yes.”

“Right this second?” Gavin asks, moving to the side of the bed where he sits. “Can’t wait any longer?”

“Do you want me to beg you?”

“Yes.”

Connor reaches forward, grabs the fabric of his shirt, pulls him closer, pulls him against the bed so he’s in Connor’s lap. When their skin touches—Gavin’s hands against Connor’s neck, he can feel a ripple of nerves, the way they ease into place against his own. He can feel what Connor meant before, about the subtle pleasure there, on the other side of something, how it sparks something inside of himself. It’s not something Connor is doing to turn him on by any other way than wanting Gavin, but it’s still there.

“I’m not very good at dirty talk, Gavin,” Connor says, and his eyes move away from his face, resting on his mouth, hands moving from his side to his waist, resting against his thighs. “I’m not going to beg you.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Gavin leans forward regardless, catching Connor’s lips with his, the hand on his neck dragging Connor closer. He hasn’t kissed someone in so long he forgot what it felt like. He usually avoids it, when he’s with others. It feels too personal, too close. He doesn’t know what Connor wants from him other than sex. He doesn’t know if it’s going to mean anything, but Connor is Connor and his lips are soft, and the hands on his waist pulling at his pants are needy, the same kind of need that Gavin had the night before.

In Gavin’s fantasies, he’s selfish. He takes everything he can. It isn’t real, so he imagines someone wanting him, worshipping him, but like this, with other people, especially Connor, it’s always reversed. He pushes Connor back against the bed, kisses him like it could be the last, presses a hand underneath Connor’s shirt. He feels Connor’s breath hitch, his name said quietly as a hand stops him from moving any further.

“Not there, Gavin.”

He nods, doesn’t press the issue. There’s no reason to. Connor is distracting him again, pressing kisses against his neck, pulling his shirt off. He doesn’t know where it lands, doesn’t care. Connor’s fingers trail across the scar on his left arm, watching them too closely, the way it cuts through all the tattoos. Gavin tries not to look at the ones on Connor’s arm, where they lie clean and unbroken, contrasting with his bandaged left arm, gauze covering up the marks Gavin caused.

He needs to not think about it. He needs to do something else other than think about that pain.

He focuses instead on Connor, on his bare thighs, on the soft cotton material of his briefs, of how easy it is for Gavin to touch him, feel how hard he is, how he gets harder when Gavin rubs his hand against him. He kisses him, tastes the sounds of Connor’s moans against his lips as his hand ducks underneath the fabric, rubs gently against him.

“Gavin—”

“What?”

“ _ Please.” _

And Connor thought he wouldn’t be good at begging. Or maybe it takes so little for Gavin to want him. But it’s still surprising, how little he’s touched Connor, how much he’s asking for more already. He doesn’t want foreplay, he just wants sex. He doesn’t want gentle touches, he wants to be fucked. Gavin can feel it. The want and the pleasure is so strong it’s clashing against his own.

Gavin is impatient—

But he’s learned how to hold things off. And he doesn’t want it to be about him. He wants it to last longer than a few minutes. He wants to hear Connor say  _ please  _ like that again.

He leans back, grabbing a bottle resting inside of his nightstand before moving to pull down Connor’s briefs. His lower half left bare, accentuating just how much there is of him. Gavin knew how tall Connor was, but there’s something different about it when he feels Connor’s legs wrap around him when he moves back into place.

Connor squirms against his touch when he presses his finger against him, wet with lube. He presses into him slowly, pushing deeper. Connor is looking away from Gavin, eyes closed, arm over his face like he’s hiding himself.

“Connor? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, moving against Gavin’s finger like he has to prove it. He mumbles something that Gavin doesn’t catch.

“What?”

“More,” Connor repeats, and then like an afterthought, he adds on, “Please.”

Gavin obliges, pressing in a second finger, moving slowly. He likes watching Connor move against him, he likes watching him try to do more work than Gavin is. He likes the noise he makes when Gavin curls his fingers, brushes against his insides in a way that makes a little gasp fall from his mouth.

And then he says it again:

_ More. Pleasepleaseplease. _

  
  


“Slow down,” Gavin whispers.

“Shut up,” Connor whispers. “Just hurry up.”

His arms wrap around Gavin’s neck, pulling him closer. Not even to kiss him, he just wants to rest his head against his shoulder, to feel his body as close to his as possible. Gavin is moving too slowly. He’s teasing him. He’s always teasing Connor.

“Please,” Connor says, trying again, trying to beg but he doesn’t know. He’s aware of how stupid the words sound when he says them, but he says them anyway, “Please fuck me.”

_ Harder. Faster. Please. Please. _

He wonders if this is what Gavin had in his head when he fantasized about him. Connor overly sensitive, cock twitching against abdomen, begging for more. He wonders how much Gavin likes it when Connor moves to meet him as best as he can with the movement of his fingers inside of him, if the arch of his back to be closer is making him harder.

“Slow down,” Gavin repeats, this time a laugh coating his voice. “God. If I had known you were so needy—”

“What, you would’ve run away?”

“I wouldn’t run away from you.”

_ Liar,  _ Connor thinks. Gavin only knows how to run, and Connor doesn’t even know where this knowledge really came from, but he can tell Gavin isn’t the type to settle. He doesn’t have anything he wants to cling onto.

He reaches forward, pulling Gavin down to kiss him again, trying to quiet the need inside of him. He doesn’t know why it’s like this. It hasn’t been that long. He isn’t like this usually. But there is something about Gavin that’s changing this. Maybe it’s the connection, the fact that there isn’t much separation between the two of them in this moment. Their pleasure is all tied into one thing. Connor can feel how much Gavin is enjoying this, enjoying him. It’s making it hard to wait. It’s making it harder to be patient for more than he has to. He’s so close, the words are on the tip of his tongue, ready to say something, ready to warn Gavin, getting closer with the way Gavin mutters out a curse, whispers Connor’s name, and he’s—

He stops, freezes in place, the echo of the doorbell quiet around him.

“Connor?” Gavin asks, stilling too at the sight of how frozen he is.

“I f-forgot,” he whispers. “My friend—she was coming over we—”

“Someone’s at your place?”

Connor nods. He’s tempted, for a moment, to ask Gavin to continue. It wouldn’t take long. Maybe a minute, maybe less—probably less. But it seems wrong, in some way, and this moment of clarity, the bell ringing, Gavin leaning over him—

This is wrong. This is all wrong. This isn’t what he wants.

Or it is—

But not like  _ this. _

“I have to—I have to go.”

“Connor—”

He doesn’t know what to do. He pushes Gavin away. Physically, mentally. He’s gone before Connor can sit up, to reach for his pants on the floor, to stumble into them, forgetting the briefs he was wearing before, rushing toward the door, knowing that he looks the way he feels. Flushed with adrenaline and pleasure, sweat on his skin, willing away how obvious it is what he was doing seconds before.

  
  


Gavin sits back, the pleasure flickering away in place of the empty bed in front of him.

Gone.

Just like that.

  
  


It’s late in the evening when there’s a knock on his door and when he gets up to open it, he already knows who it’s going to be on the other side.

He just wasn’t expecting the hand stretched out, the fabric held toward him.

“What’s this?” Gavin asks.

“Your shirt.”

“Oh,” Gavin takes it. “Did you wash it?”

“Yes. I didn’t know the proper protocol. I’ve never had a one night stand with one of my friends before.”

“Not your style?”

“No.”

“Well,” Gavin says, “I don’t think people usually wash the clothes that are left behind.”

“Sorry. Do you want me to wear it when I go jogging? Undo it?”

“No. Connor—”

“If you want it to mean nothing,” Connor says quietly. “It can.”

“The shirt or the sex?”

“Both. I just need you to be direct and honest, Gavin.”

He looks at Connor, the way he looks back at Gavin, the way he’s standing, scared, like he’s about to turn and run. He knows what answer Connor wants. It’s just not something he can give him. It’s not that Gavin doesn’t want him—he does. But a few days ago he hurt Connor when he was trying to hurt himself. A few weeks ago he tried to kill himself. This morning he tried his best not to start crying because of how much he wanted to do it again and how hopeless the effort seemed to stop it.

“It didn’t mean anything to me,” Gavin says quietly. “Just sex and just a shirt.”

Connor’s mouth moves, his brows furrowing, a tiny nod. Gavin thinks he said the word  _ okay  _ but he didn’t hear it until Connor says it a third time before he turns and leaves without a goodbye.

And what is Gavin supposed to do?

Stop him when he knows he’s too broken to properly love someone? Get into a relationship with someone that will be tied to him for the rest of his life and never have the ability to really, truly, leave him?

It’s not going to happen. It can’t.


	4. Chapter 4

_ now _

It’s been three weeks. And he rarely talks to Connor, and when he does they’re brief conversations. Awkward. Filled with the both of them trying simultaneously too hard and not enough to talk. He doesn’t blame either of them. Their paths don’t exactly cross when it’s convenient. They usually scare each other, even though they seem to have gotten a rhythm down. When Gavin thinks of Connor too deeply, he is suddenly there, in his apartment. Doing whatever it is that he’s doing. The amount of times that Gavin has been sitting on the floor, trying to read the directions of how to put something together and started to hear the sound of vegetables being chopped up, or water boiling over, and glanced up to see Connor in his kitchen, focused on his work, is nearly as often as when Gavin is laying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think of something other than Connor, and then he’s there. Laying beside him.

The initial attempts at conversation died down fast after the first week. Now when they see each other, there are quiet apologies before going separate ways. Maybe if Gavin offered a real one, they could go back to being friends, or whatever version of friends they were for such a brief time. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it would be pointless to try. He doesn’t even think he’s trying at all. Sometimes when he sees Connor he gets this uncomfortable feeling that they’re too close.

And it doesn’t help that Connor always seems to be in tune to what Gavin is feeling. When he shows up without Gavin thinking about him, it seems to only ever be to ask Gavin if he’s okay before he’s gone again. Which is usually Gavin’s fault. He doesn’t like talking about himself. He certainly doesn’t like talking about how he feels like he’s being pulled in fifty different directions at any given point. The obligation to keep living, the desire to find something to live for, the overwhelming wish that he could just give up.

There isn’t a life for him. There never has been. He’s been lucky to survive off of his inheritance for this long. He didn’t quit his job working on camera, but he put up a notice on his profile that he’d be busy for a few weeks, and he has a new job painting houses. He has something that is forcing him to do something with his days other than lay on the floor, thinking about all the things he wishes he could change. But even if he did change everything, it wouldn’t fix it. Gavin wouldn’t be able to restart  _ himself _ . No amount of changing his personality or his circumstances now is going to stop the memories from haunting him. They’re stuck there, in the back of his head, whispering for him to remember. And he’s tried to change. It didn’t do anything. He just reverted back. Every day he decides to be a good person, he is back to being biting and cruel, wishing that someone would just throw him across the room and break everything inside of him so that maybe it’ll heal correctly this time.

“Gavin?”

“Go away, Connor,” he whispers.

“You called me.”

“I didn’t  _ call  _ you.”

“You’re upset. I could feel it. You reached out for me.”

“Oh, whatever,” Gavin says. “Just because I was lonely didn’t mean I wanted  _ you  _ here.”

Connor sits up, bringing his knees up to his chest, “I was trying to sleep. You woke me up.”

“I wasn’t that upset.”

“You were in my dream crying,” Connor says, and for a moment, Gavin thinks he’s joking, but when he finally looks to his face, he can see that he’s being serious. “You were standing on the edge of a building. I couldn’t get to you, but I could feel you reaching out to me.”

“And what does that feel like?”

“I—I don’t know. A bit like you’re grabbing onto the back of my shirt.”

“Can’t believe you had a dream about me,” Gavin says quietly. “At least make it smutty next time.”

“Gavin, will you talk to me without being such an idiot?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve never seen someone that upset before. And you’re just holding it all in. You’ll barely even look at me.”

Gavin sits up, pressing close into Connor’s space, tipping his chin up so that their eyes meet, “I’m looking at you. Are you happy now?”

“Why won’t you talk to someone about this? Why won’t you just get help?”

“Why bother?”

“Why bother?” Connor echoes. “Because this is your life. Because you have to live it. Because if you tried, maybe you wouldn’t be so upset all the time. Maybe you could live with yourself.”

“Who gives a shit?”  _ Who says he isn’t trying? _

“I do,” Connor says, pushing his hand away. “Elijah does.”

“Yeah. Okay. Look, Con, it’s fine. I’m not going to kill myself. You’ll live a long happy life. You don’t need to keep worrying about me trying to cut it short. I’m suicidal, not a murderer.”

“Fuck you,” Connor whispers. “Fuck you if you think that’s the only reason I care.”

“Isn’t it? It’s not like we’re friends, Connor.”

“Why are you like this?” Connor whispers. “Every time you start to seem like a decent person, you just start to yell at me. You don’t listen to what I’m saying. You just keep acting like you know everything. I told you before that you don’t know me, but you think you do. You think you have me all figured out.”

“You only did this for money.”

“Is that why I’m here right now? Is that why I’m worried about you? Because I get money out of this?”

“You don’t want a guilty conscience. It’s not that hard, Connor.”

“Do you know how badly,” Connor says softly. “I want to slap you right now? You’re so stupid.”

It’s not the first time he’s heard it. Said so angrily, laced with so much annoyance.  _ You’re worthless. You’re stupid. We wasted money on you. We wasted time and life and energy on you. You’re so fucking stupid, Gavin.  _ He learned how to treat himself, how to talk, how to refer to any portion of himself, from the words that came from his father, from the kids at school. It’s not an excuse. It’s not an explanation. It’s just there. It’s just words. It just won’t go the fuck away. __

“Gavin—”

“Go to hell.”

“Gavin, I’m sorry.”

He’s too slow. He wishes he was a little quicker, but he wasn’t expecting Connor to move so fast, to put his hands on his face, to lean in so close to him, and by the time Connor is touching him, by the time he is pressed against Gavin’s chest, it’s too late to push him away. He hasn’t felt comfort from someone since—

Since his mother died.

He only knows how to argue. He only knows how to be mean. It pushes people away, even the ones trying to help.

“Connor…”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I just want to know what’s wrong. I just want to help you. Why can’t you let me help you?”

“I don’t know,” Gavin whispers. “I don’t know how to be a person, Connor. I only know how to be a problem.”

“You aren’t a problem, Gavin.”

“Is this all just to get me to sleep with you again?” Gavin whispers. “Come to my place and make me feel good so I can return the favor?”

“Shut up,” Connor whispers. “I never wanted you like that. I never wanted to use you. I like you. A lot. You’re the one who rejected me.”

“You gave me the choice to.”

Connor pulls away, shrugging, “Then I’m taking it back. It meant something to me. It’s why I was there. Okay? I wanted you because I want _ you.” _

“Okay,” Gavin whispers. “Can you stay then?”

“You want me to stay the night?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll stay. If you promise to let me help you.”

Gavin holds up his pinkie, offers a small smile, and Connor takes it. If only he knew just staying the night was helping so much. Collapsing some of the loneliness inside of him, even though the moment he’s gone it will just balloon outwards again.

“You know this is legally binding, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t make me lose you, Gavin.”

“I didn’t know you had me.”

“I’d like to,” Connor says quietly. “For a lot longer than just a night.”

  
  


Connor stays. He falls asleep curled up against Gavin’s side and he wakes holding onto his pillow. And he thinks there is the faint remnant of Gavin left behind. The scent of his cologne on the sheets, the feeling of an arm around his waist, a hand in his hair. He sits up in the bed, turning the alarm clock off, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders as he tries to wake himself up the rest of the way. It takes him a minute of tracing the pattern on the duvet cover to realize it isn’t his. His blanket is a soft blue, pinch pleats scattered across it. Not green plaid. Connor pulls it a little closer, brushing his cheek against the soft fabric.

There’s something comforting about this little thing they have, that he doesn’t know if it should be scientifically possible. The ability to steal things from Gavin unknowingly. He vaguely remembers Gavin pulling the blanket around him, tucking him in tight with it, like he was scared Connor would leave otherwise, as if the blanket could stop him, as if he was physically there and could be chained down.

When Connor reaches out to him, he doesn’t feel anything except the comforting feeling of dreams. Too comforting. He can feel his eyes start to close, the need to drift off again. Maybe they could meet in their dreams. Not just Connor seeing him, but the two of them together, properly. But he has to get up. He can’t wait for Gavin to wake up to tease him about this. And maybe he won’t say anything. Maybe he’ll steal the blanket for forever.

  
  


“Hi.”

“Hey,” Gavin says, leaning against the counter. “You have something of mine.”

“I do.”

“Can I have it back?”

“Don’t you have work?” Connor asks. “What do you do all day?”

“Interrogate cute ghosts about blankets,” he replies.

“Maybe I’ll hold it hostage, then.”

“For what? Calling you a ghost?”

No, but he’s aware that’s what it feels like. Not really existing in that space. A wave of concern of what he must look like when he’s by himself and Gavin is there, holding onto him close. He tried to stay up far too late to cling onto that feeling of Gavin holding him.

“You promised you’d go to therapy, right?” Connor says. “Show me proof.”

“I thought I promised to let you help me?”

“Me helping you is sending you to therapy.”

“Is a blanket really worth that?”

“Yes, it is,” Connor replies, narrowing his eyes at him. “Sides, you have mine. Is it really that big of a deal?”

“I don’t have yours,” Gavin says. “I woke up freezing to death this morning.”

“Guess you’ll need to hurry up with that proof then.”

“Do I at least get a kiss to hold me over?”

“That’ll keep you warm on all those cold nights?” Connor asks.

“You’d be surprised. I promise not to call to you when I’m—”

“Alright, stop,” Connor says, his face hot. “You—You’re being ridiculous.”

Connor leans across the desk, pressing a kiss against Gavin’s cheek.

“Is that all?”

“Did you think last night meant I wanted to fuck you again? When we didn’t even get to that point in the first place?”

“Well—yeah.”

“Take me on a date first.”

“Okay. Tomorrow night?”

“Sure.”

  
  


He’s cleaning his apartment when he notices. Fixes all the messed up pieces around his place. He doesn’t plan for Gavin to come inside, but it helps with his nerves to tidy when he’s waiting on him. Adjusting the pillows on the couch, putting the dishes away, scrubbing the dirty ones clean again, making his bed.

Connor’s hand pauses as he pulls the comforter over the edge of the bed, one hand brushing over the green plaid to smooth it as he lays it out across the bed. But if Gavin doesn’t have his blanket, where is it? He looks underneath the frame, peers around the clean floor of his bedroom, pulls back the blanket to see if it was somehow trapped between the headboard and the mattress. And when he turns back to fix the blanket, he pauses. Where it lays in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed, he notices it.

Blue fabric, pinch pleats. But where the other side should be dark blue, it’s green plaid instead.

Connor steps forward, reaching for it, running his hands along both sides and trying to pull it apart.

_ Two.  _ There should be  _ two  _ blankets here. But there’s not. There’s only one. Just both of their blankets formed somehow into one.

He hears the doorbell ring, his heart hammers in his chest as he smooths the blanket back down again, hiding the evidence as he leaves the room, headed for his date waiting for him.

  
  


Gavin can’t honestly remember the last time he was on a date with someone. He doesn’t know if he ever has been. Sex is easy, but knowing how much he wants to kill himself has sort of put a damper on the idea of having a romantic relationship. Love isn’t going to fix him. There’s little point in trying. But there is something alluring about Connor Stern. Maybe it’s just that he’s cute. Maybe it’s the fact their souls have been woven together. Maybe it’s how with every single thing Connor does, there is so much sincerity and care in his actions, that Gavin can’t permit himself to believe that this doesn’t matter.

Which is why he should be honest, he thinks, when Connor asks him what he does for a living while they wait for their food.

“I recently got a job as a painter. And I work online,” Gavin says. “With other people.”

“What kind of people?”

“Perverts,” he says with a laugh, amusing himself more than he probably should’ve. “It’s… I don’t do it often. I have a big trust fund and I’m a smart investor but… a lot of the times I go online.”

“To do what?” Connor asks.

“Depends on what the client wants.”

He knows Connor is getting at what he’s saying, but he can tell from Connor’s expression he wants Gavin to say it outright. But he can’t. He doesn’t like the word  _ camboy  _ and  _ sex worker  _ feels wrong for him sometimes. He does barely a scratch at what some of the girls do. He doesn’t deserve a word like that. Maybe he’s being stupid. He’s always being stupid. That’s not the right question. The right question is—

Maybe sex worker makes his work too real, too professional, when he doesn’t deserve that. The sort of respect the industry should have for people who do. He’s just an idiot guy letting lonely hearts pay him to do their bidding.

“I go on webcams. I do sexual stuff. Sometimes I don’t. There’s a few people that just want to talk to me. I used to do it more often.”

“What happened?”

“I met you,” Gavin says. “I had to try to be alive. And it wasn’t like I hated it or didn’t like it but… Leaving the house every day helps.”

And with that attempt, he had let it slip past him. He’s had emails and messages piling up from people that watched him, concerned about where he went. But if he takes his focus off painting his apartment or someone’s new nursery or getting new furniture or daydreaming about simple things like what blanket to replace the one Connor stole with, he will fall back down again. All he has is distractions. All he has are the things that occupy his mind and his hands so they don’t wander to a knife.

“I’m glad you’re trying.”

“Yeah?” Gavin says quietly. “Because it’s keeping you alive, too?”

“No. I do like you, Gavin. You’re funny.”

“That all?”

“No,” Connor says with a small smile. “No. I’m just really bad at trying to explain why I like people. But I like you.”

“You told me you weren’t gay.”

“I’m not,” Connor replies. “I’m bisexual. And I only said that because I wanted you to leave me alone. I wanted to be a person with you. I didn’t want to be some guy you thought you could chase.”

“No faith in just rejecting me, huh?”

“You still flirted with me after I told you to stop.”

“I’m sorry.”

Connor shakes his head, dismissing the conversation, “Do you like your job?”

“Yeah. I only do it when I want, there’s no pressure for me. No companies or competition. It’s stress-free, for the most part. I’m not trying to climb the leaderboards,” Gavin says. “Does it bother you?”

“A little. I don’t know. Can you give me some time to get back on you?” Connor asks. “Because I wouldn’t tell you to stop, you know. But I’m also not overly fond of the idea of you… with other people.”

“Okay,” he says. But he doesn’t know how to say that if Connor asked him to quit, he probably would. Even if he isn’t going online, clients pay him a few hundred bucks for videos or pictures. He’s been using old ones unless they ask for something specific.

He looks away from Connor’s face, trying to shove that reminder away. The last time he did any work was when Connor appeared in his room that night and he was thinking of Connor. Accidentally. A little on purpose.

Their food arrives, breaking their conversation away entirely. Neither of them speak again for a moment or two while the waitress leaves.

“Can I ask you something, Gavin?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you go to therapy?” he says quietly.

“For doing porn? Or are we back on the promise I made you?”

Connor shakes his head, not even the small effort of a smile or joke to be shown, “You’ve tried to kill yourself multiple times. Your brother had to go through great lengths to try and keep you here. And I like you here. I’d like you to be alive. Not just for the unselfish reasons that I think someone shouldn’t ever be in a place to kill themselves, but for the stupid, horrible reason that I’d really like you in my life for… a long time. The foreseeable future. I want you to be okay, Gavin. I want you to be more than okay. I want you to be happy.”

He thinks—

Of all the times Elijah has found him after an attempt—

No one had ever really said it like that.

“Okay. I will.”

And not for the promise of getting his blanket back.

Just for Connor.

  
  


They don’t make it far into the apartment. They barely make it up the stairs, barely to the couch. Connor keeps kissing him like he’s afraid to stop. They stumble their way over to the sofa, Connor on his lap, tugging at his shirt. No need for pretending they aren’t going to be together when it’s clear they both have a hard time staying apart. It’s just weird. It’s not who Gavin thought Connor was. He pulls away, his hands moving to Connor’s shirt automatically, pushing the fabric up before his hand is caught and Connor’s body stills.

“What?” Gavin whispers. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want you to see.”

“See  _ what?” _

Connor leans back, his hands resting on either side of Gavin’s face, “If I show you, if I tell you, we aren’t going to have sex tonight. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah.”

“And you still want me to take my shirt off?”

“I want you to talk to me,” Gavin says, tugging on the shirt. “This is more important than sex.”

“Is it?” Connor asks. Not like he’s confused, not like he doesn’t believe it is. Giving Gavin a chance to take it back, to tell him otherwise. To decide that he wants sex more than he wants to know Connor as a person.

“Show me,” he whispers. “Please.”

Connor nods, but he hesitates. He stays there for a moment before he pulls the shirt off, slowly, methodically, setting it on the couch beside him. Gavin’s eyes catch it automatically, his fingers reaching up to run along the scars on his chest. Jagged lines down the middle. Messy. Undone. So similar to the one on his forearm, ugly and hideous. No amount of pretending could make it beautiful.

“Connor?” he asks, but there’s another question behind it.  _ What happened? _

“It’s not a pretty story,” Connor says quietly. “Can you just—”

“Who did this to you?”

Connor rests his hand over Gavin’s, flattening it against his chest, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?”

“You’re not the only one that’s died. You know that, right?”

“Who. Did. This. To. You?”

Connor takes his hand, brings his fingers to his lips, presses a kiss against them, against Gavin’s palm.

“You really want to know?”

He waits for Gavin to nod, waits for him to say it out loud.  _ Yes.  _

  
  


_ [  _ **_1 — 2 — 3 — 4_ ** _ ] _

Connor has never told this story to anyone. It’s not a story he wants to tell, and he never divulged this information to the police, to doctors. He kept it secret until it was forced out of him when he went into surgery, when his soul was ripped apart and relaced together with threads of Gavin’s interwoven into it. He kept it brief then. He didn’t go into much detail. They didn’t ask any more questions, they just needed to know why his chart said something different than his body.

When he was born, his mother and his father had prepared as much money as possible to give him options. As many lives as they could afford to give him a happy life. They went bankrupt, they lost everything, but he had four little triangles on his skin, telling the world that he would survive more than it could throw at him. Physically, at least. Physically means nothing. Connor knows that.

But his mother was sick, and she kept getting sicker, and it became impossible to believe that he could ever afford to take care of her.

But there’s always an option. Illegal things to keep her alive. He needed money. He needed it fast. He had lives he would never use. He was too careful to do that. He was too terrified of death to risk it.

He was ready to give them up. Leo helped him find a guy that would pay good money for extra lives. Leo told him it was trustworthy. They were never really close, they never really spoke, but Markus’ brother would never betray him. Not when Markus was the mutual contact between them. Not when Markus would so quickly and fiercely protect his friends. But then again, he never knew.

They laid him down on that table, pumped him full of drugs that kept him conscious but free of pain, though that was a lie, too. It was just a paralyzing agent. It existed for the sole purpose of keeping him still while they cut him open and disconnected the only things that he had. Little vials full of miracle potion that would bring him back from the brink of death. But they didn’t take just the one like they were supposed to. They took three. Leo off to the side, jittery and watching. Him and his people carving out Connor’s insides. It wasn’t just the lives. It was whatever they could take that wouldn’t kill him, that the one life they left him with wouldn’t regenerate. He watched pieces of his body being packed carefully in ice, taken away, cash exchanging hands, but never any landing in his own.

Leo disappeared that night. Connor never told Markus, but he’s heard enough that Leo left town one night and never came back. The night that Connor lay on a table, his body barely stitched together. Alone in a darkened empty room until enough of him had stitched itself back together that he could move.

He never told anyone. He didn’t know how to.

  
  


_ now _

“Connor—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Connor says. “So please don’t ever bring it up again. It’s the only way I can survive it.”

Gavin nods, his hand brushing across the scar again, thinking about what it must be like, but he couldn’t. Everything that’s happened to him, but nothing like this. He’s heard of people going to back-alley doctors to sell pieces of themselves for cash. Desperation pushing them to the breaking point. He never thought Connor would be like that. There isn’t even a tattoo on his arm that should represent it. Whatever the doctors did, it broke the system. Nothing that would ever imply he had a life before.

“Can I tell you something, Connor?” he whispers.

“Is it about it?”

“No.”

“Then go ahead.”

“If anyone ever touches you again I will fucking kill them.”

“I can take care of myself, Gavin.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to kill them.”

Connor leans forward, resting his head against Gavin’s shoulder, “Okay.”

  
  


It is a funny kind of comfort to be cared enough about that someone would threaten murder, and something in Gavin’s voice tells Connor that it isn’t a joke. And maybe he should be horrified by the mere thought that someone would kill for him, but he hasn’t felt like he’s been  _ cared  _ about in a long time. He’s an only child, with a mother who loved him, but was sent into the hospital almost ten years ago. Connor would never burden her with his pain, just like he would never burden Chloe or Markus. He keeps it held up, tight like a knot placed on the inside of his throat, always choking him.

But he can trust Gavin with this. This one little thing. And he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s this bond of theirs. The sewing of their souls together makes Gavin somehow trustworthy. He doesn’t know. But he is comforted by Gavin in a way that he hasn’t been comforted by anyone.

So when he wakes up the next morning and Gavin is laying in the bed beside him still, the face pressed against his skin, tired and snoring, he wonders if they could actually be anything. He has to wonder. He likes him. He trusts him. But—

But he isn’t quite in the place to be with someone. He doesn’t think either of them are.

His alarm sounds five minutes later, when he’s already awake, already thinking, but staying still. He never quite wakes up when his alarm sounds. Always before. Just enough before that there is little use in closing his eyes again.

“Can you turn that off?” Gavin mumbles, turning against him, burrowing deeper.

“Yeah,” he says, reaching for it, silencing the room once more. “I have to get up.”

“M’kay.”

“Gavin? I need you to move.”

He shouldn’t have stayed in the first place. Connor vaguely remembers falling asleep in his arms trying to convince himself that he was okay. He remembers waking up when Gavin started to leave. He remembers grabbing onto him and holding him still.

“Just stay,” Gavin whispers. “Sleep in.”

“I have a shipment arriving in an hour.”

He groans, pulling away from Connor, wrapping the blanket tighter around him, leaving Connor bare and cold in his half of the bed. He smiles softly, retreating away, stealing a robe and slippers to shield himself from the early morning chill. When he looks back to Gavin, he gets this feeling in his stomach. Something telling him that this is normal. It’s okay. They are new, they are breakable, but small tired arguments in the morning feel like second nature.

It shouldn’t, Connor thinks. Not so early.

But Gavin is half his soul, isn’t he? Maybe there are different rules when it comes to soulmates.

  
  


Gavin is alone in Connor’s apartment. He wakes up close to noon, and he finds his way down to the shop quiet and awkward, not used to sleeping over like this, an equally uncomfortable question of whether or not he can borrow Connor’s shower and his coffee pot. Like he’s making himself at home. He normally wouldn’t ask. He would normally leave as soon as he could. But today is different. Connor is different. Gavin actually likes him. He’d like to come back here again.

When he comes back up and sheds his clothes, setting them aside to be worn again, he pauses in the mirror, staring at the blank skin of his chest, his fingers drawing over the empty space where Connor’s scar was. He doesn’t have one, like Connor doesn’t have his ancient scars, but he can feel the ghostly pain resting beneath the surface. He can hear a scream echo in his head. He can feel tears on his cheeks. He can feel the terror that Connor felt.

He isn’t making it up. It’s not a hallucination. It’s not him filling in the gaps of Connor’s story. It’s like he is Connor, laying on the table, experiencing the feeling of a knife gliding into his skin, of pieces of his body being stolen and sold.

_ I’ll kill them. _

If he knew their names, he would.

It makes him wonder, for a second, if Connor would have the same reaction if Gavin told him about his father. That same paralyzing fear that touches every single part of a body, dropping a heart to their stomach, freezing their veins. Gavin is looking in the mirror, with a hand placed against his chest, touching a scar he doesn’t have, and he can feel a thousand more existing in the surface beneath it, etched on his heart and his lungs, embedded in his ribs, coming back with every cell that’s been shed and remade again.

It doesn’t go away.

And this thing that Gavin feels right now, the thing that Connor felt on that table—

He never wants Connor to feel that again.

So he makes a quiet promise that he will never tell Connor about his father.

  
  


“Are you free tonight?” Gavin asks, freshly showered but wearing the same clothes he had the night before, leaning against the countertop. Connor briefly wonders how comfortable it could’ve been for him last night, sleeping in his jeans, though Gavin strikes Connor as the type of person that can collapse against a bed regardless of comfort and drift off.

“Already asking me out again?” Connor replies. “How bold of you, considering how last night went.”

“I thought it went well.”

“I cried myself to sleep. If you’re into that, I’m afraid we’ll have to break up before we start,” Connor says. “I don’t cry that often.”

“Well, I’m not into guys crying during sex, so it’s fine,” Gavin leans on his hand, smiling lightly. “But up until that point, I thought… it was good. Not that there’s anything wrong with you opening up to me, you know? I mean. I didn’t want you to be—”

“I’ll go out on another date with you,” Connor says, cutting him off. “If you stop talking.”

“Okay. Good. Tonight?”

“Not tonight. Next Wednesday.”

“Long wait.”

“Am I worth it?” Connor asks, tilting his head to the side. He wants him to say no, laughing and smiling because he likes the way Gavin looks when he’s laughing and smiling and so clearly lying. But he wants him to say yes, too. He wants to feel important to him. There are duelling parts inside of him, prepared for jokes and teasing and another that is craving someone to tell him that he’s worth something. It’s so stupid. It’s stupid to put so much thought into one question, but he does.

“Of course you are.”

_ Of course. _

No question about it.

“Then this Friday is okay, too.”

“Oh, moving up now?” Gavin laughs, and Connor smiles, and he thinks dully about how quickly his opinion toward Gavin has changed, and he likes it. He likes that in the span of a few weeks, Gavin has grown to be someone that Connor likes having around.

  
  


Gavin buys a new blanket at the store. He’s thinking of Connor as his hand passes over the surfaces of them, testing out how soft the varying fabrics are. He spots Connor down one of the aisles when he goes to leave, sitting on the floor with a book in his lap, glasses being pushed up gently with one hand. He didn’t even know Connor wore glasses until now.

It takes Gavin a moment to focus in on the tug in his stomach to realize Connor isn’t really here, and when he does, Connor’s gaze shifts up from the page, a small smile on his lips as he turns the page. They don’t say anything. Just people passing each other by.

Connor shows up again, two hours later, laying flat on the bed, the same book still in his hands, held up over his head against the bare mattress and pillows. Gavin sets his newly washed sheets on the floor, the plastic of the basket scraping against the hardwood.

“You need to go. Or move.”

“Hm?” Connor says, pulling the book down. He doesn’t look surprised like he had before. “Why?”

“I’m making my bed.”

“Oh, is that why you were at the store?”

“How’d you figure I was at the store?”

“I saw the grocery cart,” Connor replies. “It’s not exactly a normal ocassion for one of those to be in my living room. I like the blanket you picked out, though.”

“You spied on my blanket?”

Connor sits up, setting his book aside. The golden detailing on the front suddenly snaps into focus, the light in Gavin’s bedroom catching it the way it’s supposed to. It’s here now. Gavin has to wonder how they’re supposed to understand the way that works. How they can keep things with them.

“I should probably pay for it,” he says. “Since I stole yours.”

“Yeah, where’s my fifty bucks?” Gavin asks, moving toward the bed. “Better pay up.”

Connor smiles up to him, soft and sweet and always so fucking sad, and Gavin can tell that their little joke is already ending. There are other things to be spoken. “Can I ask you something, Gavin?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea for us to be dating?”

“Are we?” Gavin asks. “Thought we were just hanging out.”

His face falls as he looks away, “I don’t think I want to just  _ hang out _ , Gavin.”

_ No.  _ Of course not. Gavin knew that. He was being a prick. He wasn’t thinking when he said the joke. Of course Connor isn’t the type of person that wants a friends with benefits. He doesn’t want a soulmate that will show up in the middle of lonely nights to please him. He wants somebody.

Why can’t Gavin be that?

Because he still wants to die. Because a relationship and love isn’t going to solve anything. He can live for Connor, for a short period of time, but he can’t live for Connor for forever. He has to find a way to make the jump to living for himself, too. That much pressure on a guy like Connor, who will eventually break up with him?

He’s getting ahead of himself.

“I like you,” Gavin says, because it’s all he knows how to say. He likes Connor enough to try to be alive again. But he’s completely and utterly aware that Connor ever loving him wouldn’t solve this broken thing inside of his head.

“But you just want to hang out?” Connor asks tentatively.

“No. I’d introduce you to my friends if I had any, you know.”

“Oh,” he smiles softly. “Does that mean I should introduce you to mine?”

Gavin shakes his head, “Probably too soon to be introducing anyone to anybody. It was one date.”

“We’ve known each other for a month.”

“A month isn’t that long of a time,” he says quietly. “Why were you asking?”

“Because I have friends and I wouldn’t mind telling them.”

“I meant… about us. Dating. If it was a good idea.”

“I don’t want to get hurt,” Connor shrugs, but he looks away again, and the smile is gone but the pain lingers on his face. “I’m tired of hurting. I don’t want to get in a relationship with someone and… just wait for it to end and have to prepare myself for how badly I’ll feel.”

And Gavin can’t promise that it won’t end, either. It would be stupid to promise.

“Con?” Gavin says quietly, reaching toward him. His hand touches Connor’s arm, and there’s a moment of surprise like there always is that he can actually touch him. “I know I’m fucked up. And I know you have problems, too. And maybe we aren’t in the place to date. But we could… exclusively hang out until we are.”

Connor laughs, like it’s a joke, but he nods. “And how would you introduce me to your friends in the meantime? If you had any?”

“It’d only be Eli,” Gavin says. “He already knows you. But if I had a friend? Shit… maybe I’d tell them you’re my soulmate. It wouldn’t be a lie, technically.”

“We signed NDAs, Gavin. You can’t tell people about that.”

“They don’t have to know I’m being serious.”

Connor smiles again, his hand reaching up and tugging on Gavin’s shirt, his eyes resting on his, “Can you come here?”

“Don’t want to wait until Friday, huh?”

“No. Are you going to make me?”

He considers it. It sounds fun. It sounds like a dream. Make Connor wait for no other reason than to tease him. But Connor is the only thing he has had in his entire life that has finally made him feel some sliver of happiness, and he doesn’t want to let it go. He knows he is smothering Connor. He is caring about him too much too fast, but he can’t help it. He is falling and there’s nothing he can do to break that fall.

So he moves across the bed and Connor’s arms wrap around his torso tightly, pulling him down and kissing him.

This happiness isn’t going to last.

Eventually he will break again.

But he’ll try to savor it while he still can.

  
  


Connor leans against Gavin’s back, tracing the shape of a star against his bare skin, pressing a kiss against the birthmark on his right shoulder, another one on the parts of his tattoo that creep around the side of his neck. He watches his hand closely, drawing the five points over and over again, keeping Gavin here instead of leaving to continue his cleaning like he should.

But he doesn’t want Gavin to go.

He noticed something today, when he was leaning over Gavin, his hand on the headboard to help steady him. He doesn’t have a shadow. There should’ve been one, cast over Gavin’s features, with where the lamp was, the setting sun. There should’ve been a shadow. Gavin was teasing him again, asking him not to disappear again in the middle fo sex, and he had grabbed the pillow, pressed it over Gavin’s face. He saw the shadow of the pillow, but not his arm, not his face, not his body.

He doesn’t have a shadow, and he is watching his hand intently now, watching it flicker in and out of existence as he traces the shape on Gavin’s back.

“I have to ask you something,” Connor says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I think… we should talk to your brother. About this.”

“You want me to tell my brother we have telepathic sex? That I’ve mind-fucked you?”

“No, Jesus,” he says, and he tries to force out a laugh. Gavin is trying to be funny, but Connor is too focused on the shadow of his hand, disappearing in front of his eyes. “Just this connection. What it means.”

“Do I have to go with you on this chat of yours?”

“Yes,” Connor replies.

If this means something—

He doesn’t think he’d be able to tell Gavin on his own.

“Okay. I’ll call him. Not tonight though. I just want you tonight.”

  
  


Gavin is gone when he wakes. So is Connor’s pillow and his book. The clothes he tossed to the floor are missing, replaced by Gavin’s. He doesn’t know how to keep his things with him. He doesn’t know what it means. But he doesn’t think about it this morning. Connor watches the floorboards as he makes his way out of bed, to the bathroom, in and out of the shower. He watches the shadow of the towel disappear when it wraps around his waist, fading into nothingness like his body. He watches his clothes disappear one by one as he pulls them on.

He was right.

His shadow is gone, and with it, some piece instead of him that feels stable and real.


	5. Chapter 5

_[ 4_ _]_

He survived for such a long time. It’s truly a wonder how he managed it. But high school ended and the people that he spent his days with disappeared, Elijah was gone, he was pushed out into the world all alone. His father died when he was in his freshman year of college. For good, this time. It was like a miracle. A plane crash that was so far from civilization that there wasn’t any hope of getting to any of the people on it in time. Gavin grieves for some of the people at that flight, but it was a private jet, too. It was a handful of his father’s coworkers that turned a blind eye at the abuse his mother suffered from. Of course it’s a tragedy what happened to them.

But where his mother’s death was horrifying, his father’s was rightfully cruel. None of the people on that plane knew how to care for wounds. His father died over and over again like a cycle tormenting him. His body would heal together what it could, then it would bleed all over again. By the time they got there, all five people on the plane were dead, with no hope of revival.

_ Good,  _ Gavin thinks, even now. He’s cruel and heartless, he knows that. But his mother died in a car crash in such a similar way, it felt like a kind of poetry. Her death was ruled an accident, but he never thought it was. Crashing her car a second time, off the bridge and into the water, pulled underneath the surface for so long that she drowned on repeat until the last three lives she had ticked out one by one.

Did she fight to get free? Did his father try and use what little moments of life he had to get help?

They’re both dead, and it doesn’t matter.

In Gavin’s freshmen year of high school, he made a mistake, on the high of his father’s death, with all this money, he quit his classes and left college but spent his nights out at bars with strangers. His happiness left him so quickly that he was cold and empty that night on the rooftop of the apartment building. If he was still this unhappy, even when the one symbol of his hatred towards the world was gone, what was the point?

One step off a building is easy.

Crashing down to the cement below is easy.

Painful, but  _ easy _ .

  
  


_ now _

“You should stop spying on me,” Gavin says, looking up from his laptop. Connor is sitting in the chair across from him, a book in his hands as he scribbles something down on a notepad beside him. “I told you we shouldn’t be talking like this.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Connor replies. “You know that.”

“Do I?” he asks, tilting his head. “You’re always here.”

“I’m not  _ always  _ here.”

“No?”

“No,” Connor smiles softly. “Have you called your brother yet?”

“Not yet. I will though. Later. Or  _ you  _ could call him. I don’t have to be the one that calls him.”

“You do,” he says quietly. “I don’t have his number. I lost the business card.”

“Just call the office and ask for him. He knows who you are.”

“Gavin,” Connor says quietly. “Can you please just call him? I don’t know… I don’t know how.”

“I know you work in an antique store, but you aren’t like… an eighteenth century ghost, are you? You know how to use a phone, right?”

“No. I just think it should be you that calls him. Please.”

“Okay. I’ll call him. Tomorrow.”

“Later, tomorrow, next thing you know it’ll be three weeks,” Connor says quietly.

“It’s not that easy for me to talk to him. We aren’t that… close. And I’m busy right now.”

“Doing what?”

“Looking at therapists online.”

“Oh,” Connor says quietly. “I can’t help with you, can I? I have no excuse to come over?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’m glad you’re trying, though.”

_ For you,  _ Gavin wants to say. He is only trying for Connor, in every sense of the word. To keep him alive, to keep him safe, to keep him happy in some way. 

“I’m at a stopping point, though,” Gavin says. “Not a big enough break for a phone but maybe a big enough one for you to… come over. If you want to…?”

Connor shakes his head and smiles, “Give me ten minutes?”

“Okay.”

  
  


Connor shows up at his doorstep with a bright blue umbrella in his hand with matching rubber boots on his feet.

“Nice outfit.”

“Don’t tease me,” Connor says. “I wanted to go on a walk.”

“It’s raining.”

“I know. Hence the outfit.”

“So this wasn’t like… a booty call or anything?”

Connor scoffs, reaching for his hand, tugging him out into the hallway, “Come with me. Please. I want to spend time with you.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re exclusively hanging out and I don’t really want it to mean… less than it already does to you.”

Gavin lets go of his hand, taking a step back into his apartment, “Give me a second.”

He comes back a moment later, his wallet pushed into one pocket and his keys and phone into the other. He takes Connor’s hand, letting him lead the pair down the hallway. They wait on the elevator side by side, Gavin holding onto Connor’s hand tighter than he means to.

_ I don’t want it to mean less than it already does to you. _

Is that what he thinks? That Connor doesn’t mean anything to him? That this doesn’t mean anything? He tried. He tried to say that it did. But he’s shit with words, and he’s worse with confessing things when he knows he can’t have them, and he knows he can’t have Connor.

The elevator doors slide open, Connor steps forward, pulling Gavin along behind him.

He should say something. He should reassure Connor that he cares about him. That despite the booty call jokes, he never meant it that way. He just doesn’t know what else to call them. They aren’t friends with benefits. It feels strange to reduce it down to such a simple thing. The two of them are too complex for that. Maybe he is simplifying the concept of friends with benefits too much. It isn’t as though Gavin’s ever had a real friend.

But he can’t find the right words. He keeps trying. He keeps trying to think of what he could say that conveys what he means but doesn’t expose him for caring so greatly about Connor so quickly. It’s been a month and a half. Surely that is too soon to love him. Surely that’s not how he feels. He isn’t in love with Connor. He couldn’t be.

But when they step out onto the street and Connor starts to unfold the umbrella to protect them from the rain, Gavin stumbles forward, clutching onto Connor’s shirt, pulling him down to kiss him. The rain wets his skin and his hair. The gentle drizzle this morning increasing to be less than ideal for a walk. Connor brought him out into a downpour. Is this really his idea of a good date?

It hardly matters. He could be soaked to the bone and he wouldn’t care. Connor kisses him back. Gavin hears the sound of the umbrella clatter against the cement and then Connor’s hands are on his face, wound in his hair, pulling him close. He wants to pull away and joke that they should get a room, but he knows it wouldn’t be right. He shouldn’t keep pointing out that Connor thinks Gavin would only like him for sex, because he really likes him for so much more. Fuck the fact that Connor is somehow the cutest and most beautiful person Gavin has ever seen, he’s kind and he’s caring and he pushes Gavin in a way that he needs. Gavin’s had plenty of people call him on his bullshit, but he’s never had anyone give him a real second chance.

Except Elijah, maybe.

But even then, he’s never had a second chance that didn’t feel like it was given to him out of obligation. And maybe that’s the point, when it comes to Connor. He doesn’t gain anything out of this. He makes Gavin feel like there’s room to try again.

Gavin pulls back, not far, and Connor rests his forehead against his, “What was that about?”

“I just…” Gavin sighs. “I wanted you to know that this doesn’t mean less to me.”

“What?”

“I care about you, idiot. A lot. I kind of hate it.” Because sometimes it hurts. It hurts knowing even if Gavin improved to be the best version of himself, he wouldn’t even deserve Connor at his absolute worst.

“How romantic.”

“Shut up,” Gavin whispers. “Are you going to take me on your walk in this fucking hurricane now?”

“Yes.”

  
  


The walk lasts three hours. The rain dies and comes back, just when they’ve let their guard down. They spend the majority of it talking about little things. Gavin’s plan for his apartment, which is still only half redone. Connor’s small fantasy of turning the antique shop into an indie bookstore. Lining it with all the things he likes, turning his cozy reading area into a place for customers to check out books. But he can’t, which he quietly confesses to Gavin on their way back to his apartment. It feels wrong to take away what his mother built. It feels wrong to erase her life’s work, especially when she’s sick, when she didn’t leave it willingly, and the only reason she isn’t still trying to attempt to work there is her coma. 

“What happened to her?” Gavin asks.

“She’s sick.”

“Yeah, I know, but… with what exactly?”

Connor shrugs, waiting for Gavin to unlock the apartment door. “It’s a blood disease. From the lives.”

“The life she bought is killing her?”

“Yeah. Some people have a weird reaction to it. They die once, but the cure inside of it poisons their blood. Sort of like an allergic reaction I guess? It still brings her back, but… it keeps killing her. There are a few medicines that really help, but they’re incredibly expensive.”

“That’s why you agreed to helping Elijah?”

“Yeah. I have to buy her more lives because when they work the way they’re meant to, it does bring her back when she dies from it. But just barely. And Elijah sent her to a better facility. She can get better drugs now. But..” He trails off, sighs. “Even with all the money in the world, it’s just an eventual thing, right? She’s going to die. I won’t be able to stop it.”

“I’m sorry, Connor.”

“I’m fine. It’s fine.”

“Still,” Gavin shrugs. “I can make you hot chocolate. And hug you, if that’s alright. If it’d help. I know it won’t fix anything but…”

It’s a temporary bandage for what he’s feeling now.

“I’d like that, Gavin.”

  
  


Gavin loans him a pair of clothes, which Connor feels strange wearing. A good kind of strange. It’s like a tingling sensation across his body, warm and comforting and  _ right.  _ He curls up close with Gavin on the bed, the duvet pulled around his shoulders as he presses as close as he can possibly get to Gavin’s chest and then curls a little closer, hiding there. He doesn’t need to see the show Gavin’s picked out for them to watch. He’s just tired and cold and he feels safe and warm with Gavin here. He just wants to rest for a little while.

  
  


When he wakes, Gavin is asleep. It’s the first time Connor has ever seen him look so peaceful. But he can feel something. This distant ache. And then he notices the slight twitch of Gavin’s face, the way his eyebrows are drawn. Even in his sleep, Gavin can’t quite catch a break from all his thoughts and feelings tormenting him. Connor can feel it. The past is not like a sliver that can be removed. It’s like a tumor, with pieces clinging on or growing back just when somebody thinks they’re in the clear.

Connor reaches forward, trailing his finger gently across the bridge of Gavin’s nose. He wants to wake him from whatever nightmare he’s having, because he can feel it getting worse. The fear is building up, further and further.

“Gav?” he says quietly. “Gavin?”

Nothing.

He rests his hand against his cheek, brushes his thumb softly against his skin and the roughness of his stubble. And then he slaps him. Not hard, but hard enough to wake him.

“What the fuck?” Gavin mumbles.

“Oh?” Connor asks, feigning innocence. “Did I wake you?”

“N-No. Were you watching me?”

“No,” he lies. “I’m not a creep.”

“Oh, good, because the worst thing that could’ve happened is if my exclusive hanging out friend was watching me snore.”

“You weren’t snoring. You were drooling though.”

“Was I?”

Connor smiles softly, “Was it a good dream I woke you from?”

“Nothing’s better than you, babe.”

He wasn’t testing him. He wasn’t trying to get the truth about his dream out. He was just trying to talk. But Gavin’s words make him smile rather stupidly and he has to hide it by looking away, trying to play it like he isn’t completely terrified of how much he cares about Gavin and how much those words really mean to him.

“I should go.”

“Back to your place?”

“I have work.”

“It’s only ten. You could stay here for the night. If you wanted, I mean.”

“You just like me in this bed of yours, Gavin.”

“Well,  _ yeah,”  _ he says. “But it’s nice, you know. It being you.”

“I don’t suppose this is looping back into your booty call theory from earlier, is it?”

“It could, if you want it. But I don’t mind just…” Gavin shrugs. “Holding you, I guess.”

“You really aren’t used to it, are you?”

“What?”

“Being around someone for a reason other than sex.”

“No. I’m not.”

“You’re allowed to like cuddling, Gavin.”

“But I fucking hate that word,” he replies.

“Spooning?”

“Even worse.”

“You look very flustered right now,” Connor says, reaching out to touch him lightly on the nose. “I like it.”

“I look like you when I mention sex, don’t I?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Do you at least find me as cute as I find you when you get embarrassed?”

“Rate my cuteness on a scale of one to ten.”

“Definitely a solid twenty-five.”

“Ah,” Connor says, sighing lightly. “Very unfortunate, then.”

“What? I’m only a two or something? Because I’ll have you know I’m always a ten.”

“Yes, even on the scale of annoying people.”

“You’re a jerk,” Gavin says, reaching for him, pulling him back towards the bed and wrapping an arm around his waist. “You’re such a fucking jerk sometimes.”

But he’s smiling against Connor’s shoulder. He can feel it pressed against his skin when Gavin kisses his neck, and he can feel the happiness in both of them built up like a bubble of giddiness inside of their chests, threatening to be let out in a laugh. And of course he’s going to stay tonight. He doesn’t want to leave. He’d be happy having this be his life for the foreseeable future, until he has to worry about work, until he has his dinner date with Chloe, until he has to worry about antique orders and medications and all the adult things that makes life hard or boring.

But for now Gavin lets him breathe and he lets him smile and he lets his laugh be swallowed up by a kiss that makes him wish he could have the capability of keeping Gavin like this. Happy, with no regression back to the angry boy from before. Connor’s love can’t fix it. But he can act like a temporary bandage for him the same way Gavin was one earlier today, can’t he?

  
  


Connor is standing in Chloe’s place, helping her bring plates to the table and he remembers being sixteen, thinking he would never have dinner parties like movies and shows had, and he remembers being twenty and thinking it was a fake thing people made up.

And then he was thirty-three, spending his Thursday nights with Chloe and the others, chatting over whatever food they decided to cook. They'd laugh and they’d talk and Markus would share stories about antique dealers and Connor would share ones about customers and Chloe would find things to tell from her childhood that they still somehow hadn’t heard yet. They all had stories and they never stopped telling them because they always elicited laughs, except Simon, who would sit quietly and listen until his turn, when he would find a story that would somehow move them in it’s way to so easily wrap back to his point of the dinner’s in the first place.

That he was grateful for his friends. That he was happy they were there. That he was happy they were all alive. And then Chloe would tease him and Markus would laugh and it would make Connor laugh because they are a contagious few, despite their arguments, which usually happened over their nightly card game, when Chloe would accuse Markus of cheating, no matter who he was partnered with, even when it was her.

Tonight, Connor helps Chloe cook while she races around in circles, cutting up vegetables at the last second, “I thought I had more time.”

He stands by the stove, whisking the sauce, messing with the heat on the pan, “You didn’t do your mise en place.”

“Oh shut up, Connor.”

The doorbell rings, his attention is drawn towards the front door.

“Stay there,” Chloe says.

And he does, but he feels the whisk fall. He hears the plastic handle  _ clack  _ against the side of the pan and the heavy weight of it hitting the floor. He could’ve caught it, probably, but he is stuck there, staring at the pan, trying to figure out what happened. But he knows what happened. Just like he knew when his shadow disappeared and he could see it fade in and out, and even more like when the umbrella slipped out of his hand when Gavin kissed him in the rain a few days ago. He didn’t drop it.

It just—

_ Phased  _ through his hand. Like he didn’t exist at all. Like he’s a ghost.

He bends down, the frantic nervous nature building up inside of him while he tries to pick it up, but his fingers keep passing through the handle and there are tears in his eyes.  _ What’s happening?  _ What’s happening to him? Why is this happening to him?

“Connor?”

He breathes out a gasp as his hand finally makes contact with the whisk and he stands up facing Simon, “O-Oh. Hi.”

“Everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says quietly. “Dinner?”

  
  


He doesn’t share a story at dinner. He can’t find one. He can’t bring himself to do much more than play along, which at times proves easy and other times proves to be the hardest thing he’s ever done.

  
  


“Did you call your brother yet?” Connor asks.

Gavin looks away from the empty shelf, his new decor he bought sitting in plastic bags on the counter top, waiting to fill up the oak and iron shelf he built. Connor is in his kitchen, leaning against the counter, staring up at the ceiling with his phone pressed against his ear. He probably doesn’t realize Gavin is here. It’s strange, really, how little it would probably change. It’s a good idea, pretending to speak on the phone to get away with talking to each other anyway. But Connor called him, one of the few times the two have obeyed Eli’s warning not to use their connection to speak.

“Not yet.”

“Can you?”

“What’s the hurry?”

“I want answers,” Connor says, turning around. His eyes are stuck on the countertop, he’s biting his lip. It’s a weird voyeuristic feeling of spying on him. “The sooner the better.”

“Everything okay?” 

“I’m fine,” he says, but he closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Aren’t you worried?”

“About what?”

“About us.”

“What about us?”

Connor sighs, looking up, finally meeting Gavin’s gaze. His expression draws into a small surprise, the phone lowering for a second automatically before he returns it to the spot, “Just that… maybe we only like each other because we’re connected like this.”

“You think we wouldn’t like each other otherwise?”

“We never would’ve met. I never would’ve… told you. Anything.”

“We would’ve passed each other by, yeah? Not looked back?” Gavin asks. He doesn’t add that if it wasn’t for Connor and Elijah, he’d be dead right now. He only had to try one more time. He would’ve finally done it properly. Finish everything off once and for all.

“I don’t think you would’ve cared about me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You were a dick to me, Gavin. We met and you hated me.”

“Because Elijah wanted to link our souls. I still thought you were cute.”

Connor smiles softly, looking away and shaking his head, “I wouldn’t have given you the time of day, though.”

“No. Of course not. What is it about me that you would’ve hated?”

“You’re too short.”

“Oh, you like tall guys, huh?”

“Yeah,” Connor laughs. “That’s it. You would’ve needed to wear platform shoes to get my attention.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. He moves towards the counter, leans across it. He’s tempted to kiss Connor, but he knows Connor is at work. There could be any number of people in his store, there could be anyone coming to see him. And what would that look like? What exactly do they look like to people watching them? Just alone, talking to themselves? Do they act everything out, or are they frozen like statues?

“Can you call your brother?” Connor asks. “Please?”

“I will after this. If I get something out of it.”

“Do I need to bribe you every time I ask for something, Gavin?”

“No. I was just seeing if you would.”

“Come back in an hour when I close the shop,” Connor says. “Then maybe you’ll get something.”

“An hour, huh?”

“Call your brother,” he replies simply, pulling the phone from his ear. He hangs up, but he lingers for a moment in Gavin’s kitchen. His face is flushed, his smile is small. And then he’s gone, disappearing slowly as Gavin pulls away, reluctantly pulling up Elijah’s contact.

  
  


Gavin comes to his apartment an hour later, just as Connor’s flipping the closed sign over on the door and he trails behind Connor up the steps to the apartment above it and they barely get to the bedroom before Gavin has all of their clothes off. He doesn’t mean to keep asking Connor if it’s okay, but he does, until Connor finally shuts him up with a final reassurance. 

“I’m not broken,” he says, placing Gavin’s hand on his chest, where his scar lays jagged against his skin. “This didn’t break me.”

“I know.”

“So can you stop asking me every time?”

“That’s not…” Gavin trails off. “That’s not why I was asking you.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because I don’t want you to think this means less than it does.”

“Sex means a lot to you?”

“It means a lot when it’s you.”

“Oh, you really do like me,” Connor says teasingly, his voice soft.

“Shut up,” Gavin whispers.

  
  


Sex with Connor is good. It’s different, too. And not because of their link, which seems to share this sliver of Connor’s pleasure that seems to drive him absolutely crazy. It’s the fact that Connor can make him laugh when they’re having sex. Gavin will hit his head on the headboard, or Connor will accidentally kick him in the face, and it’s stupid and he has to pause for a second to tease him, but seeing Connor smile and tease him back is almost always worth it. And he’s never been kissed during sex before. It was always a prelude before they got to the bed or the alley or the car, but never during, and there’s this dizzying sense of need when Connor kisses him.

But he likes the moments after, too. When Connor sits in his lap and Gavin gets to hold him and kiss his shoulder and draw his hands across his skin, over his scar, over his tattoos.

“Can I come back later tonight?” Gavin asks quietly.

“I thought you were already going to stay, but instead you’re just going to fuck me and leave me, huh?” Connor whispers.

“I’m meeting up with Eli tonight. We’re going out to get some drinks.”

“Can I go with?”

Gavin kisses him again, like it’ll soften the blow, “No. It's a brotherly thing. But I have an appointment. Like a real one, in a few days and we can go see him together.”

“Thank you, Gavin.”

“You asked me a hundred times. I don’t think you should be thanking me anymore.”

“Fine. I’ll thank you for something else instead.”

“Like what? The sex?”

“Sure. Thank you for the sex.”

“Can you tell me your favorite part?”

“Absolutely not.”

Gavin laughs and he holds Connor a little closer, nuzzles his face against his shoulder, and he thinks—

He really loves this boy, doesn’t he?

He fell hard and fast, but he still loves him.

  
  


Connor doesn’t let him leave at first. He keeps pulling him back to the bed when he tries to get up to get dressed, and he follows him to the door, wrapped with a blanket around him, trapping Gavin against the wall. He likes kissing him. He likes feeling Gavin smile against his lips and he likes seeing him laugh. He doesn’t like watching him leave, especially when the moment he’s out the door, Connor’s face falls and he questions himself for the upteenth time that week for not telling him about the shadow, about not being able to grab things.

He doesn’t want to worry him. And he doesn’t know how to explain it. There’s this small fear that Connor is going to say something and Gavin won’t believe him, and he doesn’t want the rejection of someone telling him he’s lying or crazy.

Connor dresses in the hoodie he stole from Gavin when he stayed at his place a few days ago, moving to the kitchen to find a way to busy himself before Gavin comes back.

It’s an hour later, when he’s trying to clean the fridge and bake brownies at the same time that he feels it. Something hitting his stomach. Something hard and sharp against his ribs. A hand around his throat. His fingers claw at the skin while he stumbles around the kitchen, falling to the floor. Someone is choking him. Someone is trying to kill him. He can’t breathe and he can only feel tears spring to his eyes while he tries to free himself from something that doesn’t exist. Pain blooms against the back of his head, and he can’t tell if it was him falling against the floor on his back or if it came from somewhere else.

He thinks one thing before everything disappears:

_ Gavin? _


	6. Chapter 6

[ 5 - 6 ]

It’s quite a bit like the last time he died, if he thinks about it. There are hands around his neck, choking the life out of him, like the rope that he hung so carefully in his bedroom. And when he chokes, gasping for breath, coming back again, it’s someone pulling the thing around his neck away, touching his cheek, asking him if he’s okay.

But unlike when he tried to kill himself before, his thoughts aren’t  _ here I am again  _ it’s—

_ “Connor,”  _ breathed out in a worried, panicked gasp. His hands on Elijah’s shoulder, clinging onto his shirt.  _ Connor, Connor, Connor. _

  
  


_ now _

He was supposed to stay behind. Elijah said he’d go to Connor’s apartment to see if he was okay, but Gavin refused. He didn’t want to talk to the police. The guy that tried (succeeded) to kill him is long gone, and he lies about the fact that the life ticked away. That he could feel it. He knows Elijah is aware of the lie. He’d be an idiot to think Gavin was telling the truth, but he doesn’t stop Gavin from getting his things and running out of the bar. The thing about the world now is--

Nobody is obligated to report their own murder. Nobody is obligated to press charges. Even if he did, who would believe him? Whenever there is a live victim, everyone always twists the words around again. Shoves them back like it was his own fault.

_ And wasn’t it? _

Elijah drives him as he dials Connor’s number a third time, pressing the phone against his ear to hear it ring again and again until it finally cuts off with his voicemail.

_ What the fuck. What the fuck is happening. _

Elijah’s car barely stops outside of the antique shop before Gavin is getting out of it, slamming the door behind him and barreling against the door, knocking as loud as he can. He’s shouting Connor’s name, but he doesn’t realize until now that it’s coming out in rasping gasps. Vocal cords crushed by those hands refusing to work. He can’t remember how it happened. He is caught between being too worried about Connor to consider anything else and trying to remember what the order of events were.

Drinks set on the bar. Him and Eli talking. Gavin asked Eli if they could make an appointment. And then he’s slammed against a wall, thrown against the floor, his head pulled back and snapping against the wooden floorboards again. Then someone choking him. Then nothing.

_ But how did it happen? _

The door opens finally, and Connor stands shaking, pale and ghostly before him. Gavin moves in an instant the second he can, pulling Connor close and wrapping his arms so tightly around him that Connor’s body shaking against his feels like it’s a part of him.

“It’s okay,” Gavin says quietly. “You’re okay.”

“Are you?”

_ No. _

But it doesn’t matter what he is. The only thing that matters is Connor. He presses a kiss against the side of Connor’s face, mouths three quiet words that he can’t bring himself to say any louder, but Connor squeezes him closer, burying his face so aggressively against Gavin’s shoulder that it almost hurts.

  
  


Elijah follows the two of them up the stairs. Connor’s gaze is stuck on Gavin’s hands, neither of their faces. He keeps trying to pretend Elijah isn’t here, viewing Connor’s weakness as Gavin touches the bruises on his through as if the gentle action of his fingertips gracing his skin could heal them.

“You felt it?” Gavin whispers.

“Yes.”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” his voice shakes with the promise of tears, and Connor has to look away again to keep from crying once more. They are too linked for this. There is too much of them woven inside of each other.

“There’s brownies,” he says, trying to change the subject. His hands come up to brush away the tears that threaten to spill. “You should have some. They’re still warm.”

“Connor…”

“T-There’s walnuts in the right half. I didn’t know if you liked them like that but I do so I thought even if you didn’t, what’s the problem? It’s all--”

“Connor, can you stop talking for a moment?” Gavin whispers.

“No,” he says, glancing to Elijah. “No. I can’t.”

“Gavin?” Elijah says quietly, stepping forward into the room. “Can we talk? Outside?”

Gavin’s gaze doesn’t move from Connor’s face, and he knows they’re both thinking the same thing. They don’t want to be away from each other. Connor doesn’t want Gavin to leave him alone. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to hold himself together if he’s alone.

“I’ll make it quick, okay?” Gavin whispers, pressing a kiss against Connor’s cheek. “I’ll be back.”

“Okay.”

Gavin leans back, shedding his jacket, laying it over Connor’s shoulders. Still damp and wet from the rain outside, “Just so you know I mean it.”

He nods, watching Gavin get up and leave. His hands come up and cling to the leather, pulling it tighter. When they’re gone, he turns his face against it, feels the cool leather against his cheek where Gavin had kissed him.

He doesn’t understand why he feels this way. Simultaneously like he has a right to be upset because he just died but hating himself for this whiney, broken behavior of someone who’s still alive. So needy and dependent on someone leaving him alone again.

  
  


“I’ve never seen you care about someone before,” Elijah says, unlocking the car door as they step down into the street. Gavin follows him inside of it, shelter from the rain, but he watches with an annoyed gaze as Elijah’s hand moves to the childlock and the car starts. “I don’t know why you had to pick him, though.”

Gavin bites his lip, looking out the window at the passing streets. Water pooling against the sides of the roads, coming down heavy above them. “Where are we going? Why are you leaving?”

“We need to talk. You’re not going to jump out of a moving car, are you?”

“You think I’d jump out of a car to get away from a conversation with you?” Gavin asks, but the second the question is voice like it’s such a stupid thing, he knows it’s true. His hand even moves to the handle, tugging on it like a test. “You’re the one who picked him, you know.  _ You  _ chose him for me.”

“I didn’t want you to fall in love with him. I warned you not to, and don’t lie to me and tell me you haven’t been using your connection to talk. Why can’t you just fucking listen to me for once, Gavin?”

_ It’s not that easy. _

There’s a pull towards Connor. Gavin can’t stop himself. He has half of his soul. How is he meant to avoid him?

“He’s the only one that’s ever cared about me.”

“Fuck off,” Elijah whispers. “I cared about you. Mom cared about you.”

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the way he wanted to be cared about.

He spent his entire life knowing that all he wanted was someone to love him the way he loves Connor. He doesn’t know if Connor cares about him to that extent, but he knows when they kiss and when they hug and when they have sex it’s different than anything else he’s had before. It feels like it matters. It feels like it could go somewhere.

“What am I supposed to do, Eli? Run away from him?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to.”

Elijah’s hand comes down on the edge of the steering wheel, hitting it once, hard and vicious. “You’re going to get the both of you fucking killed.”

“Yeah?” he whispers. “So?”

“So? So you’re my brother. So if you care about him so much, you wouldn’t be doing this,” Elijah says. “Is this why you wanted an appointment? Something’s happening between you two?”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Not me. It’s him. I don’t know why.”

He meets his brother’s gaze, the patter of the rain on the windshield, the soft sound of it getting swept away only to be replaced immediately all over again. The red glare of the streetlight blurred to nothing until it sweeps back to green again and the car lurches forward.

“You know I care about you, right?” Eli asks. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to stop seeing him if it wasn’t important, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Gavin,” he says carefully. “You’re my brother. I love you. I’d do anything for you. I wouldn’t tell you to do something that would hurt you. I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever fucking wanted was for you to be happy.”

Gavin tries to believe it. He lets himself pretend for a moment. He even tries to push away the angry thought that if Elijah wanted him to be happy, he would’ve just let him kill himself and be done with it. He could find peace in death. He could find something other than struggling to survive. But it’s hard to believe. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to believe, but Gavin knows about all of the things inside of him. Everything rotten and broken. Everything that barely tries to do anything at all to find happiness.

“Why are you always so fucking mad at me then?” he whispers. “Every time you see me, you yell at me. You treat me like a child.”

“You act like one.”

“Fuck you, Eli. You didn’t even tell me you were married. I never even met him. I didn’t know he existed. And then you show up with a fucking ring and pretend that you’ve loved me all along?”

“It’s complicated, Gavin.”

“It doesn’t seem like it. Not from my perspective.”

“Then tell me how I’m supposed to fix this,” Elijah says. “Tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do to fix whatever happened to us. We used to get along, didn’t we?”

Gavin shakes his head and turns away from him, looking out the window as the car slows to a stop, parking on the side of the street. It isn’t until then, blinking through bleary eyes and looking through the blur of colors beyond the rain that he realizes Elijah’s brought him back to Connor’s place.

“Can I go?” Gavin whispers, the urge to get out, to run back up those stairs hitting him so strongly he doesn’t know what to do. Connor wasn’t okay when they left. He was still rattled. And even if he wasn’t, Gavin  _ is. _ He doesn’t want to be alone. He is tired of arguing. He just wants to lay in the quiet with Connor for a little while. He tests the door again, wishing he could do something without his brother’s fucking permission.

“No,” Eli says. “Not yet. I have more to say.”

“Then fucking say it.”

“I’m  _ sorry,”  _ he says, his words thick with pain. “I didn’t know what to do when we were kids. I didn’t know how to help you, so I didn’t try. And then we got older and I got so pissed that the only family I had left kept trying to run from me. I pushed you away. I shouldn’t have. But you pushed me away, too. And I don’t know how to go back. Gav, you’re all I have. I could survive without my job. I could recover from a divorce. But you dying? It would destroy me. I didn’t find Connor because I wanted to hurt you or manipulate you. I just wanted my fucking brother to be alive.”

“Whatever,” he says, because it’s all he can manage. He can’t look at Elijah. He doesn’t want him to see him crying, and he can’t even make a move to brush away the tears.

“Gavin?”

“I’m trying,” he whispers. “I’m trying to be alive and everything. I’ll try harder.”

“Okay.”

“But you have to know I can’t do it without him,” Gavin says. “I’m sorry it’s like that. I’m sorry he’s… the only thing I’ve been able to cling to find a reason to live. If you make me cut him out of my life I’m going to fall apart.”

“You can’t depend on him like that, Gav.”

“And you can’t depend on me, Eli.”

“Fine,” Elijah whispers. “Fine. But you have to come by tomorrow. I’ll cancel all my meetings. But you have to come and you have to bring him with.”

“Okay.”

They’re quiet for a long moment. Eli’s words finally seeming to sink into him. Things he doesn’t want to believe but things he can’t pretend aren’t real when he’s never heard Eli sound so genuine about something before.

_ I didn’t find Connor to hurt you or manipulate you. I just wanted my fucking brother to be alive. _

“I can be better,” he says, his voice so quiet he can barely hear it. A better brother, a better friend, a better whatever he is to Connor. Gavin looks back to Elijah finally, trying to unclench his jaw where it’s held so tightly shut to pull back the tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you in. I didn’t know how. And I’m sorry I was so shitty to you because of it.”

“It’s okay. I deserved it.”

Gavin laughs, small and brief and choked by the tears, “Yeah. You did.”

“Gavin?” Elijah says. “I’d hug you but it’s really hard in a car like this.”

“That’s fine. I don’t want your stupid germs anyway.”

“Thanks,” he replies. “You should go. See your boy.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “It’s not going to kill him, is it? Being around him? I’m not going to kill him, am I?”

Elijah offers a small, sad smile, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It’s not a no.

It’s not a yes, either.

  
  


Gavin comes back before Connor can finish getting ready for bed, which he does solely because he doesn’t know what else to do. But the moment he opens the door and Gavin steps inside, wet from the rain all over again, they are back to holding onto each other. Gavin’s clothes drench his own and his lips brush soft kisses against Connor’s cheeks and he feels a little less shaken.

But it’s not gone. He still feels broken in some unknowable, unfixable way, that he did ten years ago.

“Can I stay?” Gavin whispers.

“Of course,” Connor pulls on the hem of his shirt. “You have to change out of these. You’ll get sick.”

“Can I borrow something?”

Connor nods, leading Gavin back up the stairs. It was strange, before, having Gavin hold him. Like he wasn’t really here. And then he was gone before Connor got to feel like his feet were on solid ground again.

The two pass the kitchen, where Connor remembers staying huddled up in a small ball in the corner. His throat still hurts from crying, the sobs wracking his chest like a storm, burning his lungs, threatening to break his ribs.

“Here,” Connor says quietly, handing Gavin a shirt he left behind a week ago. He leans back against the wall, watching Gavin strip off his clothes. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Hm?”

“When you died. Do you remember how it happened?”

“Yeah. I remember a guy strangling me.”

“But what led up to it?”

“Nothing. Just an asshole that got too drunk and too violent.”

“Gavin,” he whispers. “Can you please talk to me?”

He pauses, turning the shirt inside out and back again. Drawing out the time. “I don’t remember all of it.”

“Tell me what you do remember.”

“This guy made a comment about the company Eli works for. That it isn’t right what they’re doing. That it’s against God. And I’m… I’m not religious, okay? And it doesn’t bother me if people are. But it was stupid. It was unnecessary. And it’s… it’s not why…”

“Why what?”

“Why I hit him.”

“You started it?”

“Sort of,” Gavin whispers. “He said some nasty shit to Elijah. About us being gay. I don’t think he knew we were brothers. I think he thought we were on a date. Which is… whatever. I’m used to people saying that stuff to me. I get it all the time. Especially people who get off on degrading others, I get requests like that all the time. But I could see how much it hurt Eli. It takes a lot to make him upset, you know? It’s not that easy to make him shut down. He’s got thick skin. Seeing him upset is like… it’s enough for me to want to kill someone, you know? And I think I would’ve, if he hadn’t killed me first.”

“You were protecting your brother.”

“Yeah. And here I thought I hated him.”

Connor smiles softly, reaching out to touch him. He grabs a belt loop on Gavin’s jeans, tugging him over to his side, “You’re a very good man, you know that?”

“Don’t be spreading lies now, Con.”

“I’m serious. And I don’t think you would’ve killed him. Eli would’ve stopped you.”

“Yeah. Eli would’ve. Not me. I’m not a good person, Connor. Don’t convince yourself I am.”

“Too late,” he says quietly, pressing a gentle kiss against the bridge of Gavin’s nose. “I already did.”

“Idiot,” Gavin whispers, but he nuzzles his face against Connor’s cheek. “I’m sorry I got you killed. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is.”

“Shut up, Gavin,” he says quietly. “Just let me forgive you, okay?”

He’s quiet for a long time, arms wrapping around Connor’s waist, “Okay. Just this once, though.”

_ Just this once. _

  
  


Neither of them sleep. They lounge in the bed together for a few hours as time ticks by. Connor finds his phone at sometime after two to text Markus that he won’t open the shop up tomorrow to save him the trip of coming by. He cancels the lunch plans he had with Chloe. He tells Simon that he might not make it to the movie a few days from now. And then he lays in the dark, listening to the sound of rain and cars and distant trains. And at some point, his eyes slip closed for what feels like a long, long time, before they snap open at a honking horn and his clock only reads three in the morning.

Gavin brushes a hand up his side, trailing along the tattoo in the dark, marking out the triangles they filled up and the ones they have left. And like a silent agreement, the two of them get up, taking pillows and blankets to the living room where they create a small nest in front of the couch, letting the sound of the television, the fake drama, the flickering colors and lights, lull them away to a quiet kind of peace. The kind of peace that Connor feels a comfort in that he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to. The kind of peace that tells him he wants this for the rest of his life. He wants to wake up with Gavin’s arm around his waist, he wants to spend mornings kissing him and making breakfast together. He wants afternoons of sharing the shower and nights spent making jokes as they brush their teeth together and ready for bed.

He wants to tell Gavin he loves him, but he can’t. He bites it back with the kind of fear from earlier that night. That maybe he only thinks he loves Gavin because he died. Because the exact opposite of that gruesome death is Gavin tracing the shape of his jaw in the dark and leaving kisses against the palm of his hand. But it feels so real. It feels so real that he holds it close and he protects and cherishes this love like letting it go means letting go of everything that matters.

Whatever happens, he’s not going to lose Gavin. Tomorrow, he’s going to see if Gavin will meet his friends. He’ll see if Gavin will come with him to the hospital to meet his mother. He doesn’t want whatever they had before.  _ Exclusively hanging out.  _ He wants more. He wants all of Gavin. He wants everything he can take.

  
  


They sit in the office beside each other. Much more formal than Gavin’s meeting a few weeks before. They wait in silence for a few minutes before Elijah arrives. Gavin keeps trying to make jokes about the office, but Connor doesn’t seem fond of replying. He seems like his thoughts somewhere else, quiet and closed off, until the door behind them opens. Connor sits up straight as Elijah sits down behind the desk.

“So,” Elijah says quietly. “I understand you two have been… having side effects.”

“Yes,” Connor says quietly.

Elijah’s gaze shifts to Gavin, “Right. Can you tell me the extent of it?”

“We talk through a connection,” Connor says quietly. “Gavin told me we shouldn’t but… it happened. A lot.”

“Is that all?”

Connor bites his lip and shakes his head, “I can feel his emotions. He can feel mine, too, I think.”

Gavin watches Connor look at him slowly, like he’s afraid of meeting Gavin’s gaze before he nods, “Yeah. I can.”

“Okay,” Elijah steeples his hands. “To explain what’s going to happen, I need to explain what this is. We don’t call it soul linking because it sounds trendy. It’s real. We undo the material of your inner self and weave together someone else’s soul into it. Your lives are dependent on each other’s. You know that part already, right? Right. So, there is no injury or death that the other doesn’t feel. There are lines, of course, and everyone is different with the degrees of how horrible pain has to be to be felt by their other half. Some people are more sensitive, some people are less. Sometimes wounds are entirely transferred over.”

Connor nods, “We know.”

“You know?”

Gavin’s gaze moves to the floor, but he feels Elijah’s eyes on him. The regret and the pain is boiling inside of him.  _ He never meant to hurt Connor.  _ He will hate himself for that for the rest of his life for that. It’s worse than the murder the night before, in some ways.

“It’s not easy to know the extent of this that everyone faces. The entirety of soul linking is so unknown that it’s… hard to get real facts at any point in regards to anything. We don’t know why some people form the bond to be able to feel or talk over it, but we do know one thing for certain and that’s exploiting the connection is the worst thing you could do for each other.”

“How so?” Connor asks. “What’ll happen?”

“You could disappear.”

“Disappear?”

Gavin looks to Connor, the concern on his face so vivid that it’s impossible to ignore.

“It’ll start off slow. Your shadow might disappear. You won’t be able to hold things. People will stop being able to see your physical form. They might be able to hear your voice, but it’ll be distant. You’ll start to only exist within the view of your other half.”

“Like a ghost,” Connor whispers.

“Yes. Exactly like a ghost.”

“Connor?” Gavin asks quietly.

“Does it happen for everyone?” Connor questions, ignoring him. “H-How quick is the process?”

“Depends on the people, their bond, how often they use it. It’s not easy to watch over. We’ve tried. Everyone is far too different. How people feel towards each other… there’s a hundred variables we can’t keep track of. It’s not something we’re well versed in, just that it  _ happens. _ It could take anywhere from a week to a year.” Elijah leans forward, “This is why I didn’t want you two to talk to each other through it. There are things that can kick it off, speed it up.”

“Like what?”

“Death, for one,” he looks away from Connor, his eyes on the desk. “Sex is another.”

“Not everybody disappears though, right?” Gavin asks. “Just some people?”

“If you talk through the connection, there’s an eighty percent chance one of you will disappear, Gavin.”

“We could be the twenty,” Gavin says, looking to Connor. “Right?”

But when Connor’s gaze finally meets Gavin’s, he knows.

He knows they aren’t.

They wouldn’t be that lucky.

“Connor…?”

“It flickers in and out,” Connor says quietly. “My shadow. Sometimes it’s here but… most of the time it isn’t.”

Most of the time.

_ Why didn’t he tell him? _

Why didn’t Connor just—

“There are a few things we can do to slow down the process, but we won’t be able to stop it entirely unless we sever your connection to each other,” Elijah says. “We can have one of the doctors prescribe you a medicine that helps clot your blood. It seems to do a decent job of keeping you here. Take iron pills. Don’t talk to each other. At all. Not over the phone, not through the connection. Don’t see each other.”

“At all?” Gavin asks.

“At all.”

“Why the fuck not?” he asks. “Why the fuck—”

“Just listen to me, Gavin,” Eli says quietly. “Please. You didn’t listen to me before—”

“Because you didn’t tell me it would fucking  _ kill  _ Connor. You were vague as you possibly could. If you had just—”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Well now I’m fucking worried,” Gavin says, standing up. “You’re telling me I’m killing him.”

“I’m sorry,” Eli whispers. “I didn’t think…”

“What? That I would care about him?”

Eli nods. Once. Slowly. Confirming everything that Gavin has ever thought he was like in Eli’s eyes. Just a selfish idiot that couldn’t care less about the people around him. And now look where they are. Elijah was right.

If Gavin did care, he wouldn’t have kept talking to Connor. He wouldn’t be here. He would’ve listened to Elijah’s warning, even if it wasn’t as explicit as it should’ve been. If he cared—

Connor wouldn’t be dying.

“It isn’t a death, technically,” Elijah says quickly. “Connor isn’t going to technically die. He’s just going to fade from being seen or heard by other people. He’ll exist solely within you, Gavin.”

“It’s a kind of death,” Connor whispers to himself.

“You said we have to sever the connection, yeah?” Gavin asks, stepping back towards the desk. “How do we do that?”

“Surgery. Again. Reversal of what we do before. You’ll be completely yourself again.”

“And after the surgery, can we see each other?” Connor asks. “I can talk to him again, can’t I?”

“After the surgery…” Eli trails off. “You likely won’t remember him at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve severed connections before. The majority of the people after don’t recall ever meeting each other. You’ll be aware that you’re missing gaps in your memory but Gavin won’t mean anything to you. You probably won’t even recognize the name.”

_ No. _

_ No. No. No. _

It would be fine—

It would be fine if Connor forgot about him. Gavin would be okay with that. But him losing Connor? The only thing that has brought him any joy in the last two months? He can’t lose Connor. He told Eli that. He tried to make him promise. He just wanted a fucking promise that he could have him.

“How long would I have to live if I take all the medication and not talking to him then?” Connor asks. “Without the surgery, I mean?”

“Maybe a few weeks. Two months, max. But you can’t put off the surgery, Connor. If you disappear, you’ll lose everything. You’ll be dead, essentially, maybe not literally, though. But you can’t operate on someone without a corporeal body.”

Elijah looks up to Gavin finally, where he stands by the door, wanting to leave but trapped here because he needs to know this information, and it’ll hurt worse being told from Connor’s mouth.

Especially since after he drops him off, they’ll likely never see each other again.

“Gavin? You have any questions?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “How soon are you going to schedule the surgery?”

“Next week. Friday, probably.”

Six days.

Only six days.

  
  


They sit in the car in the quiet parking lot. Gavin hasn’t started it yet. The cold air is seeping in making Connor pull the jacket a little tighter around his body. Gavin’s jacket. He’s still wearing Gavin’s jacket. He can’t let it go.

“We could make a scrapbook,” Connor says quietly. “I could put pictures of us in there. Write little snippets. We could record a video. We don’t have to forget each other, Gavin. We could make something to remind us--”

“You think either of us are going to care about that shit?”

He swallows back the pain of Gavin’s words, trying to force out more of his own, “I think it’s worth a shot.”

“Yeah?” Gavin sighs. “I don’t.”

“Sorry it’d be such a horrible thing to be with me again,” Connor whispers.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just… I meant you have an out now. You don’t have to worry about finding me.”

“And if I want to find you?”

“God, Connor, we aren’t even dating. You really think we’re worth all that effort? We don’t even know if it would work out in the end. It’s not like we’re in love.”

“No,” he says. “I guess not.”

“You didn’t even tell me that this was happening, Con.”

“I was scared.”

“Don’t you think you being scared is a sign that we shouldn’t try and push this any further than we have?”

_ No. _

He was terrified. Terrified that saying something would make Gavin not believe him. Terrified that saying it made it more real. Terrified that it all would mean this. That he would lose Gavin.

And now he’s here.

Fucking losing Gavin.

They sit in the quiet, the inside of Connor’s chest constricting like a knife digging into his heart and his lungs. He is trying his hardest not to cry. He is trying his hardest not to say anything else. He doesn’t know if he loves Gavin. It is too soon. They aren’t dating, and it’s Connor’s fault for making sure that they weren’t, but he didn’t think that this would happen, either. That so soon the possibility of the two of them would fall apart like they were nothing. He wants more. He wants to see where they could’ve gone. He would’ve loved that.

He doesn’t want to forget Gavin and he doesn’t want to disappear. Those are the only two things he knows now.

“Can you take me home?” he says, instead of anything else, because he needs to be alone where he can cry without Gavin seeing him. “Please?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

  
  


When the car stops in front of his place, Connor hesitates for a moment before he gets out. He wants to kiss Gavin. He wants to say goodbye. But he’s too angry and he’s too upset and too close to tears to kiss Gavin. But there’s this reminder in the back of his head, that their last kiss was a sleepy, exhausted thing. A chaste press of their lips together while they made coffee and got ready to leave for their appointment.

Is that really the last one?

Is that really how they end?

What happened to his Gavin from last night, that was holding him together, that was so perfectly quiet and content and loving? Why is he like this now? So cruel and heartless and not looking at Connor no matter how long he stays in the car, avoiding leaving him for the last time?

“Gavin?” he whispers.

“What?”

“Can you look at me?”

Gavin shakes his head, a hand brought up to his face, “You have to go.”

“Just like that?” he murmurs. “We’re ending just like that?”

“The fuck do you want me to do, Con?”

“I want you to look at me.”

He does. A slow turn of his head, his jaw tight like he’s angry, “Get out of my car, Connor.”

“And what if I stay?”

“You want me to call the cops on you?” Gavin says. “Fucking arrest you for stalking or whatever? I will. You heard what Eli said. We can’t be near each other.”

“I just want a real goodbye, Gavin. I want you to not be an asshole to me again.”

“You want your real goodbye, Con?” he asks. “This is it. We aren’t fucking worth this. We never were. It’s all too much fucking trouble. I’m an asshole, Connor. I always will be and I always have been. I can’t change that.”

“You can. You just don’t want to. I know you--”

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do. Please get the fuck out of my car. I don’t want your ghost haunting me, Connor.”

Connor shakes his head, picking his bag up for the floor as he pushes the door open, “Why do you have to make it so hard to love you?”

The door slams closed behind Connor and Gavin hesitates there, a breath shuddering out from him. All that anger and all that callousness seeping away from him in a painful gasp.

And Connor isn’t even inside his apartment yet. Gavin can see him with his keys struggling to unlock the door and he already wants to call him back. He already wants to take everything away again.

But he’s not an idiot.

He knows the best way to scare away someone he loves is by being as cruel as possible.

It’s how it’s always worked.

He’ll feel a little less horrible about all of this if it’s ended with Connor hating him. Just like he thought he’d feel a little less guilty when he finally ended his life if Eli had cut him off.

It doesn’t make it easy to do, though.

It doesn’t make him regret it any less.


	7. Chapter 7

_ now _

Connor is trying to come up with a routine. Four days have passed since he’s seen Gavin last, and every day starts the same way now. His eyes open, he reaches out gently, a soft brush against a hard wall that Gavin’s put up between them, shoving him back. A sort of violent thing, pushing him further and further away. Connor lays there, feeling the press of tears at the corner of his eyes. Not at Gavin’s refusal to be with him, but at the entirety of the whole situation. It isn’t like they’ve known each other for a long time. He doesn’t know why he thought they could be anything more. He doesn’t know why he tormented himself with the idea that somehow, they’d be with each other for a long, long time. But he still wishes he could’ve had more.

It’s so incredibly unfair, this situation.

He finally found someone he could trust and now they’re gone. He thought, maybe—

Maybe he’d have someone he could love. Maybe someone could love him. Maybe they could touch the scars on his chest and instead of pitying him, they’d help ease away that memory. But the world is unfair, and it’s ripping Gavin away from him in such a violent manner.

Be with him and lose his entire life or lose Gavin and know, somewhere, that he lost someone this important to him.

It isn’t like a break up. Their souls are laced together. It isn’t that easy to just accept Gavin as another person. And who says he has to feel rational right now about losing someone he cares about? Who says that just because plenty of people survive breakups, he’s not allowed to feel broken and miserable? Maybe Gavin wasn’t the one. Maybe he never could be. But Connor still cares about him. It still fucking stings like a bitch.

“Gavin?” he whispers quietly,

There’s nothing. A rustle, maybe. Like the fluttering of curtains in front of an open window. But the wall is still there.

“Please come back,” he says quietly. “Please don’t make me go through this alone. I know it’s only a couple more days, but I don’t want this to be how it ends.”

_ I’m sorry,  _ a voice whispers back. 

He thinks he feels a hand touching his cheek, but it’s gone before he can grasp the feeling of it. And then there’s nothing. No soft whisper, no pain touching the edge of his heart that doesn’t belong to him.

Connor hides his face behind his hands and he lets a choked sob escape from him before he shoves the rest of them down, further and further and further until his vision stops being so blurry, until his throat stops aching quite so badly. When he finally feels like he can put on a fake face, he stands up with heavy limbs, making his way to the bathroom, sifting through all the pill bottles. One at a time things that are supposed to keep him from disappearing popped into his mouth, washed away with water.

Like it matters.

  
  


He found Connor’s book this morning. The one he left at Gavin’s apartment. He returned the pillow, but he forgot this. He’d set it aside, always meaning to bring it back to him, but he kept forgetting. And now it’s sitting beside an empty mug that holds pencils and pens that he’s somehow accumulated so quickly.

Gavin takes one of them, flips to the back of the book, his pen poised above the endpage. He thinks about writing something. Like an apology. And then he thinks of writing a sort of love letter. And then he considers writing everything that’s happened. Connor wanted a record of their life together. A scrapbook that could maybe reignite their lost memories when they wake up again.

He settles on three small words instead. Written in a loose scrawl that takes up the upper right corner. He initials it, not really knowing why, but feeling like the words should be tied to him somehow. Maybe the book will never make it back to Connor’s possession. Maybe it’ll stay here forever.

But at least there’s something somewhere where he’s confessed his feelings.

  
  


The pills aren’t helping.

Chloe came by to visit him today while he was working, and he couldn’t get his fingers to type anything into the computer. His hands started shaking so badly that he curled them up into fists, trying his best to cover his panic. He can’t tell Chloe what’s happening, and she doesn’t ask. But she looks at him with this concern like she always does when Connor doesn’t get enough sleep, when he’s thinking more than doing. He doesn’t know what to say. Admitting any part, no matter how small, no matter how twisted, would feel like a betrayal. Not to the contract he signed, but to  _ her _ . He never told Chloe he was in a relationship. He didn’t know how, not when there was no real label for them.

It’s not even a real breakup.

It’s so  _ stupid. _

But he’s grateful when she leaves, because he can stop pretending. He spends ten minutes trying to flip over the sign on the door that says  _ Closed!  _ in a neat script his mother spent an hour perfecting. When he retreats to his room, he feels like he is slipping through the mattress, further and further. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining the metal springs digging into his flesh or not, but he can feel the pain of it anyway. Slicing him open, letting him bleed.

“Gavin,” he whispers again. _“Please.”_

_ I can’t. _

“You can. You just won’t.”

_ Please leave me alone, Connor. _

“I’m scared,” his voice breaks.

_ I know. _

He can feel it. He has to feel it. Connor’s fear is bigger than his pain. He’s disappearing, little by little. When he saw Markus yesterday, he even commented on how for a moment, he thought he saw the pen in Connor’s hand like he was a ghost. They both dismissed it as the light, but Connor knew. It’s happening so much faster now, and the last time Connor remembers feeling solid and real was when Gavin was there in the car with him, breaking his heart.

“I need you.”

_ I’ll hurt you. _

“You’re hurting me anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Gavin repeats, louder this time.  _ Here.  _ He’s touching Connor’s face again, brushing tears from his eyes, pressing a kiss against his forehead. And even just this tiny thing, this tiny touch, Connor already feels more stable. “I don’t know how to keep you safe.”

“You can’t,” he whispers. “Just come over. Just be here with me.”

“Eli told me to stay away. I could make it worse.”

“Nothing’s helping anyway,” Connor whispers. “I might be gone before the surgery regardless. If I disappear I want you to be here with me.”

“You’re not going to disappear,” he replies, but there is little conviction in his words. “You’re not going anywhere, Con. I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

“You can’t stop this.”

“I can fucking try.”

“Stop trying,” he says. “Just come over.”

Gavin sighs, shaking his head as he pulls back. The further he moves from Connor, the more he disappears into the dark of the room around him. Inch by inch he’s gone and Connor is all alone again.

  
  


“Hello?”

“What would happen if I saw Connor right now?” Gavin asks, forgoing a greeting. Elijah has both eyes and caller ID. The fuck does he need to waste time for?

“I—I don’t know,” he sighs. There’s a soft sound of movement, a light clicking on and a voice followed by Elijah’s distant from the phone. “Go back to sleep, babe. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Who are you with?”

“Who do you think?” Elijah asks, then sighs. “Why do you need to see Connor right now?”

“I didn’t say I did.”

“You called me at two in the morning asking the ramifications of seeing him, and you aren’t the type to take precautions. Are you there with him?”

Gavin leans back in his seat, looking towards the sign for the shop, “No.”

“But you want to be.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He’s scared,” Gavin whispers. He hasn’t felt fear like that in a long time. It’s much worse than whatever Connor felt when he was on that table in the basement. It’s worse than a few days ago when Gavin came to him after their mutual death. “I need to be there for him.”

“You need to or you want to? He’ll survive without you.”

“Fuck you,” he whispers. “If your husband was panicking about dying, you’d be there for him.”

“Not if it was going to worsen the situation.”

“And will it?” Gavin asks. “Or will I just feel like a piece of shit for not trying to comfort the only person that fucking matters to me right now?”

“Besides me?” Elijah ventures.

“No. You’re not counting right now. I’m pissed at you.”

“That’s fair,” he says quietly. “Is Connor taking his pills?”

“I assume so. I haven’t talked to him in a few days. Just tonight. He said they weren’t working.”

Or rather, he didn’t say anything about it at all, but Gavin could feel it. Every time Connor speaks to him, he can feel how much emptier he is. He’s losing himself, not just his body. He is becoming more and more weightless.

“I can’t tell you that it’s okay to see him, Gavin. You know that.”

“Just like you couldn’t tell me that talking to him would kill him?”

“Gavin, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to. You’re a loner. You hate people. You think I expected you to ever want to talk to someone like that?” Eli asks. “I should’ve told you. I know that. If I could go back, I would. I can’t defend my actions, but I can at least explain why I did it.”

“You should’ve told me sooner.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll apologize for the rest of my life if it makes you feel better.”

“It will,” Gavin whispers. “Eli, is it really possible for him to disappear in two days? Could he really vanish that quickly?”

There’s a quiet rustle on the other line, Elijah’s voice quiet and distant, “I’m sorry. It’s really important. I’ll be back in a second.”

Gavin shakes his head, his hand gripping hard on the phone. He wants to throw it. He wants to break something. How is it fair? How is any of this fair? Elijah is at home with somebody he loves and Gavin is here, a few yards away, unable to do shit about helping him.

“It’s risky. There’s a chance, maybe. But it’s probably slim. I don’t think the process would speed up that much in two days, no, but it could still happen. So I would advise you to--”

“Not even if I spent every second with him?”

“Again, Gavin, I don’t think you should—”

“But if I was with him, it’d be okay?”

“Yes. I suppose. Statistically speaking, where Connor was when we last talked and the length of disappearing entirely, even if you spent everyday together, you’d have until next week. But you can’t use the connection, Gavin. You have to be physically there.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Go back to your husband. And I’m sorry. You do matter to me.”

“Yes, I know. You love me. You wish you didn’t. Family is an awful thing, isn’t it?”

“Fucking terrible.”

  
  


Connor opens the door slowly, mostly because if he moves too quickly, his hand passes through the knob instead of opening it. But the moment his eyes meet with Gavin’s, everything inside of him seems to snap into place. There’s the press of cool metal against his palm where it holds the knob of the door still, the soft brush of wind from outside. It’s like a gust of reality hitting him, grounding him here.

“You’re here,” he whispers.

“Yeah. I am,” Gavin says, holding the book out to him. The one with his little hidden message. The one he never wanted to give back because he liked having a piece of Connor with him. Connor feels his insides twist, his head ache.  _ Not him.  _ That’s not him. Gavin is squirming his way inside of Connor’s head, or maybe it’s the other way around. “I brought you your book.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s yours.”

“That’s the only reason you’re here?”

“No,” Gavin says, looking to the floor, “I’m here because I love you and I don’t want either of us to be alone right now.”

“You love me?”

“Yeah,” he whispers, nodding. “I’ve never told anyone I loved them before.”

“How romantic,” Connor says quietly. “I’m the first.”

“Connor, I’m really sorry about all this. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Eli warned me and I just ignored him. If I’d know this would kill you, I wouldn’t have… I’m sorry. Can I come in?”

“Can you tell me you’re sorry about before, too?” Connor asks quietly.

“What?”

“In the car. You were a real jerk.”

Gavin nods, “Yeah. I just… thought if I was cruel maybe you wouldn’t care if I left you.”

“Love doesn’t work like that, Gavin.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. But I thought it would hurt less--” he pauses. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“But you love me.”

Gavin nods, leaning against the doorway, “You’re right. I can’t let you be alone. Eli said two days wouldn’t kill you, right? You think two days can make up for me abandoning you?”

“No.”

“But I can still come in and try?”

“Of course.”

  
  


“We might not forget each other,” Connor says, but he’s writing anyway, in the journal resting on his lap. Everything and anything he can think of that matters. Starting from the beginning, working his way here. “It’s a possibility we remember.”

“Yeah.”

“So… if we do remember,” he says. “What’s the first thing you’ll do after you wake up?”

“Find you and kiss you.”

“Oh,” Connor smiles, looking up to him. “I like that.”

“And you?”

“I’d probably kiss you, too.”

“You can’t copy me.”

“Okay. I’d kiss you back.”

Gavin laughs, “That can’t count, Connor. You have to come up with something else.”

“Fine. I guess I’d ask you to be my boyfriend instead of my friend I exclusively hangout with.”

“I suppose the second thing I’d do then is agree to it. And then I’d take you out on a real date.”

“And agree to meet my friends?” Connor asks.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

Connor sets the book down, incomplete but containing as much as he can manage to write right now without feeling more carved out and empty than he already does. He doesn’t think it’ll be enough. Not really. If he found a random book detailing a love affair with someone he doesn’t know, he would be curious, but he doubts he would follow through on this. Gavin was right. There’s little point to it.

But it’s written, and that’s all that matters to him. He’ll hide this in his closet. Maybe in ten years he’ll find it and think of it as a strange short story he wrote one summer. Maybe he’ll be happy and content and never need to seek a once-loved stranger out. Maybe he’ll be with Gavin.

He doesn’t know.

But he does know that he doesn’t believe he’s going to remember Gavin. The odds aren’t in their favor. They never have been.

“I love you,” Connor says finally, breaking the silence. “I didn’t say it before. I should’ve.”

“Why now?”

“I need you to hear it. I need to say it before I run out of time.”

Gavin nods, the smile on his face gone now, “Do you think we’ll be okay? After this?”

“If we forget each other?” Connor sighs. “I don’t know. But we can try, can’t we?”

Gavin nods, “Yeah. We can try.”

“And if you remember me,” he says quietly. “But I don’t remember you. Will you come find me?”

“Of course.”

“You promise?”

“Only if you promise to come find me if I don’t remember you.”

Connor holds out his pinky and Gavin takes it, a tiny promise resting between them that neither knows if they can keep.

  
  


Gavin leaves the next day a little after noon. He’s having dinner with his brother. He’s meeting the husband for the first time, and Connor can feel his nerves through the flimsy wall that they try to keep between them. But Connor keeps slipping in and out of reality after Gavin leaves. He can see his surroundings shift and collide. Something strange happens before he realizes the living room he’s staring at is Gavin’s and not his own, and when he turns, Gavin’s cooking in the kitchen, setting food out on the counter, chopping up carrots and celery.

Gavin said he would’ve brought Connor with if it wasn’t his first time meeting either of them, and he believes it, but he wishes he had gone. Watching Gavin now is like looking through a kaleidoscope. The room he’s standing in now splintered in fractured pieces around Gavin’s kitchen. He feels lost. He feels distant. He feels like a ghost that not even Gavin can see.

His eyes follow Gavin to the door to his apartment, opening it up. He can’t see the people. Just distant blurry shapes, the sound of voices like they’re run through a hundred filters. He presses his hands over his ears, falling to his knees, his eyes closed.

_ Make it stop. _

  
  


It’s not as awkward of a dinner as he expected, though Gavin knows the only reason Eli planned it for today was to check in on Gavin and make sure he was alright. The guise of a dinner to meet his brother-in-law is a nice cover, though, but Gavin isn’t stupid.

Elijah likes the soup, which is one of the only meals Gavin can remember Eli ever liking that their mother prepared. He searched high and low through his cabinets to find the recipe box, grateful that it was the one thing he kept when he purged his apartment of his life from before.

But it’s weird looking at the person beside Elijah and knowing it’s his brother-in-law. He’s not bad looking. He has a nice laugh. He’s quiet, but sarcastic and dry, and he wears the ring on his finger instead of stuck on a chain underneath his shirt. But Elijah right now is wearing his, too. He twists it around his finger whenever there’s a lull in the conversation. They talk about the wedding, briefly, which Elijah says only had two other people at it. Markus and Simon. It’s strange hearing the names. He’s heard Connor’s friends mentioned in passing before, when he’s needed to cancel plans or leave Gavin for them. He knew they had mutual friends--it’s the only reason Elijah picked Connor--but putting it in perspective like this is bizarre and serves as just another reminder how close they’ll be when this ends.

Gavin leaves the table, heading back to the kitchen to retrieve dessert when he stops in his tracks fast.

“Fucking Christ,” Gavin murmurs, a hand on his chest, trying to still his beating heart. Connor is sitting in the kitchen, curled up against the fridge, knees drawn to his chest, face hidden in his hands. “You scared the shit out of me, Con. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Con?”

“I don’t know where I am,” he says quietly. “Or I do. But I don’t.”

“Connor? I don’t know what that means,” he whispers, lowering his voice as he bends down to hide behind the countertops. “Are you okay?”

“I told you. I don’t know.”

Gavin reaches a hand out, touching his shoulder, but it passes through. Something isn’t right. Connor doesn’t look right. He doesn’t look like he’s here like he usually does. Gavin can make out the sleek chrome texture of the fridge and the lines of the tiles through his body.

“You shouldn’t be here, Connor,” Gavin says quietly.

“I know. I have to leave. I just… don’t know how. I think I’m stuck.”

“You’re not stuck,” he says. “You can’t be stuck.”

Connor nods, “Right. Right. I’m not stuck. I’m just here for a little while.”

“I’ll tell Eli I have to cut dinner short, okay? I’ll come back to your place.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Connor whispers. “He’s your brother.”

“He’ll still be my brother when I’m with you.”

Connor laughs, weak and small, “I suppose so. Do you like his husband? Do you get along with him?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s only been an hour.”

Connor nods, “I know him.”

“Eli?”

“No. Daniel. He’s Simon’s brother. He must’ve met him through Markus. Me and him don’t get along at all.”

“I’ll be sure not to invite him to our wedding.”

“Don’t tease,” Connor whispers, looking up to him.

Connor holds up a hand, touching Gavin’s chin lightly. His fingers are cold and warm at the same time. A kind of reality contrasting with what he knows should be real. He doesn’t even know how to describe the way Connor’s touch feels, except that it’s wrong in every sense of the word.

“I’m not gone yet,” Connor whispers. “You shouldn’t rush your dinner. But I need your help.”

“How?”

“I need you to push me away. I need you to lock me out like you did before. I think it might free me from this place.”

“Okay. Okay. I can do that.”

Connor smiles softly, sweetly, sadly, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

And then he pulls the wall up between them. And it’s so weak and fragile and he tries with every bit of energy he has to strengthen it, but he can still feel Connor’s fear in the back of his head. He can feel Connor’s soul wrapping up inside of him, like when Connor disappeared, it wasn’t back to his body, but inside of Gavin’s own, curled up around his heart where he will try to keep it protected.

“Gavin?”

He turns around, looking up to Elijah leaning over the countertop at him, “Hi.”

“What are you doing on the floor?”

“Nothing,” he says quietly, standing up. “Just… I lost an earring. Or whatever the fuck they say in movies.”

“Wow. That was a real good excuse,” Elijah narrows his eyes at him. “Are you avoiding us or was he here?”

“Who? What?”

“Connor. Was he here just now?” Elijah looks behind him. “Is he still here?”

He doesn’t know. He can’t tell if Connor is here or not.

“I made a pie. Or, I bought one. But I put it in the oven. You like apple, right? Does Daniel like ice cream?”

“Gavin—”

“Elijah, I’m trying right now,” he whispers. “I’m trying to be a good person. I’m trying to be a good brother. I don’t want to talk about Connor. I can’t. I know we aren’t supposed to talk with the connection. It wasn’t on purpose and he’s gone now, so just let me offer you and your husband a piece of fucking pie.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Alright.”

  
  


“Can you tell me?” Connor asks, tracing the tattoos on Gavin’s forearm. “About all the times before?”

“So our last night together can be spent with you feeling bad for me?”

“No. That’s not what I want. I just want to know you before I lose you.”

Gavin sighs, beckoning Connor closer. He pulls him down into a long kiss, holding him there, brushing his thumb against the side of Connor’s throat. He needs a kiss like this before he says anything at all. He needs to have one last kiss that he can remember Connor by before his eyes fill with worry for him.

And when he breaks, he starts to tell his story.

From the very beginning.

From the car crash to the suicide to the murder. He watches Connor’s expression change, and it bothers him as much as he knew it would. But it’s not the surprising part. The surprising part is when he cries. He doesn’t know why he does, but Connor brushes the tears away and replaces them with kisses and holds Gavin close.

“You never deserved any of that.”

But if it hadn’t happened, he never would’ve met Connor at all.

So really, shouldn’t he be so fucking grateful what his father did to him and his family?

“It’s okay,” Connor whispers. “I’ve got you.”

_ I’ve got you. _

Of course he does.

He always will.

  
  


He thinks they dream together. It doesn’t feel like they’re separate here. It doesn’t feel like he is a he anymore, but a we, a them. He doesn’t even know what the dream is. Something else entirely. Purple skies and bright stars, chipped plates and painted floors. Two blankets that have become one. Soft cotton, rough denim, smooth leather. A kiss brushed against his temple, a hand around his waist, an  _ I love you  _ whispered a hundred times over.

He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t think he wants to. There is something safe and comforting in this dream and he’d like to never wake up again.

  
  


[ 7 ]

It is a kind of death. Gavin knows this. It doesn't count but in the brief moments where the doctors ask their questions and put the mask over his face to send him back to the him before Connor, the version without the love and the kindness, he knows a part of him is dying and he has to count it.

The last thing he sees before his eyes close is the ceiling above him, masked doctors with their blue latex gloves and scrubs, their white masks and their patterned scrub caps. But the last thing he hears is Connor's voice and he clings to it like it could stay with him.

  
  


_ now _

Elijah explains it to Gavin a third time, trying to help him fill in the gaps he's missing. He was tied to someone, but it was dangerous, so the tie was cut. He has someone new now, though. Elijah won't tell him anything about the stranger, just that it's ensured they have never seen each other and never will. It's safer that way.

He keeps refusing to answer Gavin's question of how the connection before was dangerous. Maybe that's for the best. What is Gavin going to do? Hunt them down? Start all over again? They should feel lucky that Gavin's not in their life anymore.

"If you have any questions, call me, okay?"

"Okay."

  
  


The apartment isn't at all how he remembers it. He has vague memories of picking a paint color and buying the rollers, but when his hand touches the wall he can't remember painting it. He can't remember where half the furniture has come from either. He's missing bits and pieces that don't feel like they should be missing.

And there's a shirt folded up in his dresser beside his pajamas he doesn't recognize. He picks it up and unfolds it, looking at the faded graphic of an animal shelter volunteer for a puppy adoption thing from last spring. Gavin recalls it, but he wasn't working it. He was just wandering around trying to decide if getting one was a good or a bad idea. He remembers looking at a little chocolate lab and wondering if he could survive for it. He had decided on no and left. 

His hands are shaking though, bringing the fabric to his face and breathing in the soft scent of the detergent and he knows that's not his either. But it feels like his in some way.

Gavin returns it to the drawer, pushing it closed, his arms wrapping around his waist to hold in the pain that comes from such an unknowable origin it crushes him all over again.

  
  


He found it in a book, marking the space in the middle of chapter eight. He doesn't remember reading it, and it doesn't strike him as something he'd read anyway. It's why he was flipping through the pages trying to see if there was something that could lead him to the owner or lend an explanation of where it came from. But all he got was a business card for an antique shop that read  _ come back soon --C.S.  _ on the back.

So Gavin is here. Outside an antique shop with a book in a bag on his shoulder and the growing sense of not knowing why the fuck he's doing this, especially when he has work in an hour. 

The bell chimes above him as he steps inside. It's empty of employees, so he moves towards the back, surveying the wares. He comes to a slow stop by a shelf housing China sets. They look familiar. Three of them look identical to the ones his mother collected and cherished when he was a child.

"Can I help you?"

Gavin turns around to face him, struck for a moment at the boy's appearance. His gaze turns to the name tag, but his mouth is already forming it before he reads it. 

"Connor?"

"Yes?"

"I… Are you C.S.?" He asks, but he knows and he doesn't know how he knows but he's digging the book out of his bag and finding the business card.

"Where did you find that?" Connor asks, stepping forward. "I was looking for it all morning."

"The book or the card?" Gavin says, holding it out to him. "It was in my apartment. It's yours?"

"Yes," he replies, taking them.

"You wrote a note to yourself?"

"Maybe. Why? And why did you have my book?"

"Fuck if I know, man," he says quietly. "Have we met before?"

"Unlikely. I think I would recall you if I had," Connor says, moving back to the register and setting his things on the counter.

"You look familiar."

"I just have one of those faces."

No. It's more than that. It is dripping with the same curiosity that the card had. It was his own business card. It was a note written to himself. But it was in Gavin's place. It doesn’t make any sense.

"Do you want to go out?"

"E-Excuse me?"

"I found your book. Think of it as a reward."

"I don't know. I'm busy."

"Every day this week? Every day next week?" Gavin offers a small smile. "Come on. Make time for me."

"I don't even know your name."

"Gavin."

"Well,  _ Gavin _ , I don't go on dates with strange men that have my belongings."

"I don't have it anymore."

Connor looks away, biting down on his lower lip but there's a curve at the edges of his mouth, "Fine. Okay. Pick me up on Friday at eight."

"Good. I'll see you then. You won't regret it."

"I hope not."

And he smiles this time without holding back and Gavin knows he knows that smile. He has kissed it a dozen times. He has traced the shape of it. He has memorized the way it feels brushing against his skin.

And he remembers. 

_ Everything. _

  
  


_ three years later _

Connor steps into the room, his bag on his shoulder feeling like a heavy weight that’s going to drown him. He already feels like he’s drowning. He always feels like he’s drowning lately. He finds him by the window, sitting in a chair pretending to put a puzzle together. Connor says  _ pretending  _ because he knows that lost, vacant gaze, not really focused on anything. The pretending of putting pieces together even though there’s no reason they would be placed there.

He moves over to him, standing awkwardly beside the table, “Hi.”

Gavin looks up, “H-Hi. What are you doing here?”

“Can I sit?” Connor asks, looking to the chair opposite of him. It feels so quiet here, so strangely intimate. When Gavin nods, he takes his seat, setting his bag on his lap like he could hold it and it would protect him. “They told me you lost your memory.”

“Some of it,” Gavin says. “Would’ve ended up here anyway, probably.”

Connor looks behind himself at the other people. When he was a kid, watching movies, he always was presented with a much different version of what a mental hospital would look like, and he knew they were inaccurate, but he didn’t think it’d be like this, either. So quiet.

“You have something to say?” Gavin asks. “Because I do remember some things.”

“Do you remember me?”

“Of course I remember you, Connor,” he whispers.

Connor nods, feeling tears prick at the edges of his eyes. He doesn’t know why it’s hitting him like this. “You stood me up. Three years ago. I don’t remember you. From before, I mean. But I remember that.”

“First guy to ask you out in ages, right?” Gavin smiles, like it’s a joke, like this is nothing, but it falls. “Sorry.”

Connor reaches into his bag, taking out the journal. So small for containing so much. He read through it thirty times before he decided to come here. He had five phone calls with Elijah Kamski trying to find Gavin to begin with. It wasn’t easy.

“I found this when I was moving—”

“You moved?”

“Yes,” he says. “The antique shop closed down. Not enough business.”

“That sucks, Con,” Gavin replies. “I know you loved that shop.”

Connor shrugs, pushing the journal forward. “This was hidden in my closet. From before the surgery that separated us.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does to you,” he says. “Or you wouldn’t have stood me up. That’s why you didn’t come, isn’t it? You remembered us?”

“You told me to come back for you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because,” he says, leaning forward. “I would’ve ended up here eventually. Your mom is already sick. You think I wanted you to have to deal with another person in the hospital? I told you before but… maybe there was nothing between us. Maybe it was just the connection. And can we really force ourselves to try and love each other if there’s nothing really there?”

“How do you know nothing’s really there unless you try?”

“God. Even when you don’t remember me you still want to argue about this,” Gavin whispers. “I’m not worth it.”

“You were worth it to me,” Connor says, looking at the journal. “Maybe not this me, but the me before. And the me before loved you. Why can’t this me?”

Gavin shakes his head, looking away, “I’m not that person anymore. And I don’t want to argue about this, so if that’s all you came for—”

“No,” Connor says. “You were in a car crash, right?”

“It runs in the family,” Gavin says, nodding. “Drowned twice before they got me. Just enough for parts of me to die forever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I still remember you,” he says. “Even if I think we’re a bad idea, at least I still have the memories of us that were good.”

“We’re a bad idea but we had good times,” Connor says quietly. “Contradictory, don’t you think?”

Gavin shrugs, “So?”

“I don’t know. It just seems to me that you’re still pretty similar as to who you were before. I wrote about you being stubborn. You don’t let anyone in. You wouldn’t let me care about you.”

“You vented that much about me?”

Connor reaches for the journal, flipping to one of the marked pages and turning it around to face him. “ _ Gavin’s not hard to love, but it’s hard to watch him destroy himself. _ ”

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says. He keeps apologizing and every apology seems so genuine it’s tearing him apart. Maybe it is. “But you know if you leave now you won’t have to deal with that again.”

“But I’d like to stay,” Connor says. “I’d like to come back. How can I convince you to let me?”

“You can’t.”

“Fine,” Connor says, closing the journal, returning it to his bag. “Then I’ll stay regardless of whether you want me to or not and I’ll wear you down, because I think you’re worth it, even if  _ you  _ don’t.”

He watches Gavin bite back a smile as he looks away, “You’re so obnoxious. You’re worse now than you were before.”

“Maybe. But I liked you before I found this journal and I really wanted that date. So I think you owe me and I’m going to stay here and finish this puzzle with you and if I make you laugh, you have to let me come back.”

“Why the laugh?”

“I really built it up to be this really cute, wonderful thing in the journal, so I’m trying to see if I was right about that.”

“And let me guess—if you fail, you have to keep coming back until you succeed?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” Gavin says quietly. “You can stay.”

He sees Gavin’s small smile as he pushes some of the pieces over to Connor’s side. This tiny thing that he had written about over and over again. This man that he loved. Connor knows he falls in love easy. He knows his heart is a thing that gets trampled on again and again and it isn’t always their fault. It’s his own. He knows he’s doing this again. Letting someone have that ability to destroy him.

But he felt empty and strange for three years until he found this journal, when he felt a little bit like a piece was falling into place.

He doesn’t remember Gavin. He doesn’t remember him at all. But he loved him once. He can love him again, can’t he?

He wants to.

More than anything.


End file.
